Loving my baby

I was just watching the most recent episode of "Parenthood" on NBC when the lawyer Braverman talks to the coffee girl about how she feels so embarrassed about having asked if she could adopt the coffee girl's baby. The coffee girl starts crying and says the reason she said no was because she would like a closed adoption. She says it's hard enough already and handing the baby over to someone that she knows and likes would just be too much for her to handle. Of course I cried. I cry at everything these days.

Having known several people who have had fertility issues, I feel I am especially sensitive to NOT asking married couples when they're planning on having a baby or when a couple will be starting on #2 - anything related to "why are you not walking around barefoot and pregnant 24/7?". It never really occurred to me that may be I shouldn't ask people who are currently pregnant any questions either. I immediately flashed back to my picking up a to go order from a restaurant a few weeks ago. The bartender was pregnant and I asked her when she was due. She didn't seem at all excited about being pregnant or that there is another little one on the way. She did tell me she already has a boy and this one is a girl so she's hoping a girl will be more.........well...I can't remember the exact word she used. I'm sure it was a form of subdued. She said her boy likes to be outside ALL.OF.THE.TIME and it's SOOOO annoying to her.....She was hoping the daughter would want to stay inside and play barbies in her room

How boring. I know I'm not the only parent who feels this way, but I was pretty put off. I'm so over the parents who are so bothered by being a parent - especially when they continue on to have a 2nd or 3rd. I have an employee who was completely incensed that the state was forcing him to provide his 2 year old with healthcare coverage. He has it for himself, of course, but God forbid he enroll his daughter who doesn't have any other coverage!

I just have to say, I feel so blessed and lucky to not only have such a great baby, but a great husband who loves the baby as much as I do. When he wants to go outside and look at the ducks he has seen no less than 800 times already? We go and we crack up at how excited he gets! As he's "aged" he went from squeals of joy, to grunts and points, to calling them with kisses, talking to them with quacks, to now trying to get as close as possible squatting and calling them with kisses as you would a dog. When he wants to swing at the park for so long that he begins to fall asleep, we continue to snap pictures. My sister makes fun of me because I have a 75 page photo book averaging 6 pictures per page from birth-5 months old of his life. I've TRIED to cut out some, but truth be told, I have more I want to put in there! I can't bear to delete ANY pictures from my computer even though they're all backed up on Shutterfly. I love to play with him, to engage, and I would be lying if I wasn't happy that he liked movies now. It's nice to be able to put Horton Hears a Who on the tv and sit with him or be able to cook dinner and still talk to him. He still comes running in to tell me there's a WOOOO on tv, even though we both already know that. I adore every.single.second I have with him and I KNOW my husband feels the same way. He can't bear to not kiss the baby before we go to bed every night even though the he's sound asleep. He stares at him and asks "Dean! How did you get to be SO CUTE?!?!?" Of course Dean says "momma" haha! just kidding. Anyway. With a face like this, how could someone NOT be madly in love?

Dinner last night?

ahh-maahhz-ing. Said like Penny from Happy Endings - what? you don't know that show or how she says it? Sorry for you, but it's hilar.

Our pork sammies ended up to be delish. Even the baby ate almost an entire half of a shredded pork on a hoagie bun sammie. We did have to put extra BBQ sauce on there, but I'm proud to say that this week I've tried a few new recipes and they've all turned out to be keepers! Even the leftover broccoli, onion combo meal turned into a pretty badass breakfast today! I scrambled an egg and put it in with the leftovers, brought it to work, warmed it after I finished my coffee and felt like I was having a sinful breakfast, but really it was a veggie delight. I took out the leftover beef strips and threw them to the dogs. Lit-rally.

Today's food log is as follows:

Breakfast - above detailed ah-mahhh-zing veggie scramble.
Morning snack - carrots
Lunch - the hubster george foremaned up some salmon last night for us to enjoy with salad today. He was going to BBQ it, but turns out the unsupervised child at some point turned the gas to "low" and the propane was gone. Super parenting. I took out the last of the pre-portioned lettuce containers and set the salmon next to it to determine what else should go with the salad. Since this was week 1 of healthy eating, I was out of cucumber. So I decided we'd each eat 1 roma tomato (I bought 4 for the week thinking I would eat them all by my lonesome since the hubby claims to hate tomatoes, but he informed me I picked some winners and they weren't all smooshy and slimey - his technical terms - so I would be "allowed" to continue use of said maters). ok, so roma tomatoes, black olives, and that's all he wanted. I threw in some cubed mozzarella for myself. shoot - I had garbanzo beans I could have used too! Anyway - he tossed some cajun seasoning onto his salmon after he took it off of the foreman, but I don't like that shiz, so I sprinkled some sesame seeds onto my salad and some all spice onto the salmon.
Afternoon snack: almonds and yogurt covered pretzels
Dinner: TBD - we're going to his boss' house and I heard mention of wine and pizza.

Yesterday and last night I was really craving snacks. I totally wasn't hungry, but I just felt like munching. I also kept thinking I should get some suckers or something, but then I remembered there is so much sugar there that going that way probably isn't a good choice....I kept popping in pieces of gum but that wasn't helping anything. I did have a few bite sized candy bars yesterday - my warehouse guy brought them to me and I couldn't resist.

I haven't had any wine on Tues, Wed, or Thurs. Tonight I'm going to have a glass or 2, but I'm sure I'll end up driving so my husband can drink - it's usually the other way around, but, it's his boss not mine. I have to make a grocery list today and stick to the $80 I have left over from my budget. remember the $16 to stupid Sprouts?! That + $4 for the baby's lunch at school today. It feels lazy not to pack his lunch, but they offer pizza and fruit for lunch on Fridays only and he LOVES "eeesssaaa" so I feel so conflicted! I let him have pizza today.

what day is it??

It's only Thursday and my motivation is already sort of slipping away. I know it's stupid, but I feel fatter today than I did on Monday. I've gone a few days with no booze and eating rabbit food all day and not even having treats at night with hubby! That a-hole has probably already lost like 20 pounds. Guys suck hairy balls when it comes to weightloss

Last night that chili turned out to be amazeballs. I brought some for lunch today, but my boss offered me In N Out, so of course I took that instead. The way I figure, my lunch was juuuust about under 500 calories. http://www.in-n-out.com/pdf/nutrition_2008.pdf According to the nutrition menu, my double double with no onions and most of the cheese scraped off (I don't like to ask for "one cheese, please" because I feel like that's taking it too far when I've already gone with the super secret protein style in the first place), I should be able to squeeze in just under 500 calories. I also didn't order fries. I DID eat some of my boss' fries on the way back to the office, but that's my little secret. I also skipped the soda and kept with my sugar free, pure cranberry juice with water mixture. After my satisfying lunch, I promptly polished off my snack size baggie with exactly 1 serving of yogurt covered pretzels (courtesy of Sprouts and part of my $16 bill). I'm not hungry. I feel fat and lazy.

Tonight I am making shredded pork sandwiches. Unfortunately, it's not my favorite, so why did I even decide to put that on the menu for the week?!?!? It's covered in BBQ sauce which I'm sure is awesome for the "diet". I put it in the crockpot, poured a can of beer over it, dumped about 3/4 of the bottle of BBQ sauce, sprinkled on some paprika, cumin, garlic salt and corriander. I ended up pouring a cup of water in as well since the meat didn't look covered enough to me.

I'm going to stop for some fresh rolls before I pick up the baby. I was going to do that at lunch, but again... I had In N Out.

Next week? We start exercising

Kill me now

Day 3

The morning was a little hairy. It doesn't seem to matter if I wake up 45 minutes before scheduled departure or an hour and 45 minutes before...I"m always running late during the week. This is why I try and do as much as I can to prepare the night before.

Last night I prepared our salads. I took out our pre-packed lettuce and took stock of what I had left in the fridge. I had defrosted a little chicken, so I tossed that on the George Foreman. That took like 7 minutes but I had that cooking while I was putting everything else together. I cut up the other half of my cucumber, divided that into 2 containers, peeled 2 hard boiled eggs, removed the yolk and cut one up for each container, cut up 2 roma tomatoes and put one in each, put some slivered almonds into a mini container so they wouldn't get mushy and waited for the chicken to cool so I could put that in too. Here's the 1/2 way completed salad sans chicken and dressing. I put the dressing in a mini container as well so hubby wouldn't have to carry an entire bottle back and forth.

I also packed him a snack baggie of carrots, one serving of yogurt covered pretzels and some fresh strawberries. For breakfast, he ate a banana and a cliff bar

For my snacks, I went with the 1 serving of Triscuts and cheese again, carrots, and strawberries. My breakfast today was another green smoothie. I thought it tasted good again, but a little watery. I wonder what it would taste like with a little nonfat plain yogurt??

Last night I also pulled out the crock pot. Wednesdays and Thursdays going forward WILL be crock pot meals or something like we had last night that can happen really quickly. Once I pulled the crockpot, for this chicken chili recipe that I got from Pinterest, I pulled the ingredients

I guess I forgot to put the taco seasoning packet in there... As you can see I have the chopped onion in a bag that I chopped while prepping the broccoli/onion recipe. And the chicken is in the fridge....where it should be...not contaminating the air with it's rawness. I'm going to make cornbread to go with it. We have sour cream and cheese if needed also. I'm not sure of the calorie content, but I do know that I'm glad I didn't make all 5 days of packed lettuce for salads for me because there is going to be A LOT left over!

Day 2 dinner

These were the ingredients I used to make this broccoli/onion concoction meal I told you about yesterday. I didn't take an after picture, but it looks really similar to how the website shows it. Bottom line was that the meal was delish. SHOCKINGLY good. I was anticipating going through the night craving candy and chips or bread or something because I knew I'd barely pick at this bowl of onions and leeks to eat only the broccoli. Not the case. phew. The only thing I would change for next time is to use either chicken or shrimp because I didn't care for the texture of the beef.

Now, if I was better at life and blogging I'd be able to tell you exactly how long this recipe took from beginning to end, but I'm not. So, we'll estimate. I took everything out and set it up for that moderately nice photo. That took no time at all. I then chopped the leek and put it into a bowl. I didn't know how much broccoli to use so I estimated and ended up using nearly 2 crowns (I figured I liked broccoli and I would need plenty to pick out). I then chopped an onion. I looked at the clock and after those 3 things were done, it had been just about 4 minutes. I then decided to chop an onion for dinner the following night. I then stood around for a minute wiping the tears from my eyes and yelling "How you doin, baby? you watchin the WOOOs??" (For those not 'in the know', "woos" are elephants) and "How ya doin, pumpkin? You need anything? You ok?" then thinking to myself "what the fuck am I doing - why can't I be more organized so I don't have to plant my kid in front of the boob tube during the last few minutes of light we have?!?!" So then I took out a measuring cup and realized since my toddler likes to play with measuring cups, my 1/2 c was missing. I like pine nuts, so I measured out 3/4c.

While we're on the topic of pine nuts, I'd like to give you a quick PSA. The pinenuts I told you about previously -that I saw at Trader Joe's for the rapist price of $7.99? Turns out that's a good price. Who knew. After the baby and I stopped the car at the ATM at 4:52 yesterday, we deposited mommy's paycheck and took out $100 for groceries for a week. We're going on a food diet and a money diet. I digress. Then we walked over to Henry's which I have discovered is the exact same thing as Sprouts because the Henry's sign was taken down and there was a banner that said something like "Different name, same great something-or-other" with a Sprouts logo under. Inside, everything was labeled "Sprouts". Fine. So we found the feta. $3.99. I can't remember the exact cost at Trader Joe's, but I feel like there may have been one a little less than that. I had to search for one at that price though - most of what I saw was $6 and up. for SIX OUNCES! WTF?! ok, so then we found the bulk pine nuts. I immediately started to freak and wonder "umm should I be getting raw or toasted???" so off we went in search of packaged pine nuts.

I finally stopped to ask a stocker. "Excuse me, could you tell me where to find pine nuts?"

him "We have bulk...over there"

me "Yes - I found those, but I was looking for packaged...Do you not have packaged? orrrr....."

him "ummm... Well, you know if you buy packaged you're paying for the packaging, right???"

me "yes. I realize that but I was looking for toasted pine nuts and there aren't any of those in bulk" (plus I secretly DID want to check the price comparison)

him "oh. ummm uhhhh"

me "nevermind. I'll just get the bulk"

him "sounds good!"

Not to me it doesn't, but whatever dude. So back to the bulk we went and had to get a package of yogurt pretzels for the baby because I didn't want to get arrested for giving him one out of the bulk, which I can only assume would have been cheaper since there is no packaging. Anyway, the pine nuts? Must be rare or exotic or something. Those suckers were OVER $20 a pound!!!! So I got a small bag: here is a picture next to the "6oz" of feta I got

These 4 items at Henry's/Sprouts?

Cost me $16.00 even. Almost 1/5 of my total weekly grocery budget.

oh ...back to dinner... quickly. It was so fast. I did the onions as suggested in the recipe until a little brown then I tossed in the meat - I think those 2 things took about 10 mins total, then I tossed in the broccoli, leek, and pine nuts, sprinkled on the spices and stirred it around for just a few minutes! Under 5! Then I poured the egg whites over and it was done in another 3 minutes or so. I can say without a doubt this is a less than 30 minute meal. May be even less than 20. Healthy and yummy. can't beat that. We'll be bringing this into the rotation.

Day 2

So last night after our grocery store sushi dinner, I set out to prep our lunches for today. I vowed to get up earlier than I had on Monday so that I could make a smoothie for breakfast. I got out 2 of the pre-packed lettuce containers and since I had not defrosted chicken as previously planned because I"m a scatterbrained mother who runs around like a chicken with no head, I decided it was tuna salads for day #2.

One day, I'll get better about putting pictures in this thing. For now, this is what I managed to snap. This is what you get - you'll like it and not complain like greedy bitches. You're welcome.

Ok, so today, I put 1/2 can tuna, 1/4 sliced (into quarters) cucumber, a little less feta, and some black olives in my secondary container used for toppings. I also brought along my ripe avocado, which didn't make the cut in the photo shoot and in a teeny container I put almond slivers - I didn't want them to get soggy. As you can see, I also packed some carrots for snack. I also neglected to bring my handy dandy triscuts and cheese over for the picture. I put 6 Triscuts in a snack bag and put 4 small slices of colby jack cheese in another. Turns out this was a smart change from bringing everything with me to the office because after I polished those off, I was ready to eat 100 more. I wasn't HUNGRY but I wanted to eat more. This girl loves food.

For breakfast, I also woke up early enough to shower make a smoothie (don't judge. I did also make breakfast for the kiddo and got him dressed and ready to go to school) Tomorrow I'll have to get up early enough to do both. Anyhooo, I put a good sized handful of spinach in the blender, a frozen banana (I always over estimate the number of bananas that will be consumed in our house and I can't bear to throw them away when they're brown and spotty, so I break them in half and freeze them), some fresh strawberries, like 5 frozen mango chunks, and I had a skosh of pink lemonade left so I poured that in with some water. I had to hit chop a few times, but I ended up with the liquefy setting until I was satisfied I wouldn't be ingesting soggy, liquidey (technical term), spinach leaves. I was a trooper and gave the baby a sip before I took one. If he would eat it, so could I. He promptly sucked down the little amount I gave him, ditched the oatmeal and asked for more? more? more? I took my own sip and whaddya know?! It tasted like a strawberry smoothie! you DEFINITELY have to get past the dingy green look of the smoothie, but the taste was great! I swear- you could NOT taste the spinach! I SWEAR!


Right now I'm about to go dig out the carrots and tonight I'm going to attempt this broccoli recipe. SHIT! I just noticed I'm going to have to buy more feta! I think I've bought feta like 3 times in my life and now I'm buying a 2nd container in a week! I hate going to the market after work after going to the atm all with a toddler. It's not very efficient getting in and out of the car - nothing is a "quick stop" anymore. Anyway, the hubby is DYING to try this and I already bought the broccoli, weird leeks (I'm not even remotely close to wanting to use these things), onion, and eggs. Looks like I'm going to have to be on the hunt for those pine nuts too. I saw some at Trader Joe's, but that little bag was freakishly pricey! $7.99! I thought I could find them for less $$ but I was unsuccessful. I hope the stir fry style beef I bought tastes good in this concoction. Oh and if you're wondering? My body and I both despise peppers, so those are not on the list to get into the dinner.

May be I should take some pictures so I can do a before and after. that would be sufficiently humiliating. and may be a little motivating....I should probably also start counting calories or something too.

No wine tonight. NO WINE.

I'll let you know how that goes tomorrow

And so it begins.

The hubs and I have decided to embark on a trip to skinnyville. I hope my one reader, sister, enjoys reading about our journey. Let's travel back in time a few days. I'm feeling disgusted with myself. I don't consider myself fat, well, ok, I guess I do consider myself to be overweight. My goal is to shed like 30 pounds, but as long as I feel like I look good in the clothes that are currently hanging in my closet waiting and waiting.....and waiting.......to be worn, I'll be happy. I'd like to get back to my pre-wedding shape...Although, since I've had a baby, I know that's not going to be 100% possible. Saturday, the hubs asked if I wanted to try and lose weight together. normally, this type of question would be rewarded with me sulking and thinking HE thinks I'm fat and disgusting and never wants to touch me ever again, but I decided to try a new approach and after recalling visions of myself trying on 15 different t-shirts to wear to the park until I felt satisfied, I said "sure!". I sat down and made a list for the market. Typically I spend $70-$100 a week on food for the 3 of us. This trip was the first after a long time and I needed to stock up on some essentials. I spent over $200 between 2 stores. shoot me now. I should tell you that I was a little sickened at the total spent especially since I had taken great pains to write out a meal plan for the week!! When I got home from the market on Sunday (which, by the way was a treat trip all by my lonesome - able to roam the aisles in all of their glory - we'll discuss my strange love of grocery stores at another time) I took inventory of my items and set off to work. I bought 2 bags of spinach from Trader Joe's, a head of green leaf lettuce and a head of red leaf lettuce. So I just have to say I'm not going to run down the list of all of the shit I bought because it would be intensely boring. I washed all of the lettuce and put 1/2 spinach and 1/2 lettuce in 8 gladlock "entree" size containers I did 4 for myself and 4 for hubby. Partly because that's how many containers I had available at the time and partly because I'm often left with too much dinner and I have to bring it for lunch the next day because I'm the only one who will eat leftovers other than pizza. Our grand master plan was to work out every night. But life gets in the way. Last night we had to talk to the rents about a certain financing situation so working out (oh and my vow to not drink during the week) was out the window. However, my plan to eat healthy was still on track. We Imade this salad for our Monday lunches. I have to say the finished product looks kinda nasty on their site. I followed the directions relatively closely - I skipped out on the salad and avocado- I bought a few avocados, but they weren't ripe. I put the fixins (tuna, kidney beans, feta, green onions) in their own gladlock container - that took no time at all. Between the rinsing, the squeezing of cans, and chopping onions, I'd say that part was done in less than 3 minutes. Then I started on the dressing. I've never made my own dressing before, so I was a little nervous. I had to buy all of the ingredients except the honey. I even had to buy paprika! I was out! anyway, back to the dressing. I whisked it up and it tasted pretty good. there seemed to be enough for both of us for 2 days. The hubby ADORED the dressing. I thought it was a little dijon-ey for me and I may have used a little too much feta for my liking. All in all, I was definitely full from the salad. I had 1/2 of a plain bagel with butter for breakfast - not so healthy, but delish nonetheless! For snack both morning and afternoon, I had almonds. For dinner, we dined on sushi from the grocery store- don't knock it. This store has a sushi chef and will make customized rolls for you!