Friday, May 13, 2016

{7 QT 25} - While I Was Out



So... I just realized that it has been five MONTHS since I last participated in 7 Quick Takes, and I don't know about you... but that's entirely too long.

I'm pretty sure most people probably thought that my blog just kind of passed out after I had kid #2 and hadn't woken up yet. Here's 7 quick takes of what's been going on in my life since the new year.




So... I made New Year's Resolutions. In fact, I made 12 new year's Resolutions about being intentional in the new year, and I numbered them 1-7. I was a math nerd in my day job when had one, so I'm allowed.

And there's been something like a flurry of activity in the ball house ever since.


So... this happened.
Yep. She's a keeper.

This is Roo Roo. She and Pitter Patter were both born on Sunday, and you know how the child that's born on the Sabbath Day is bonny and blyth and good and gay. Yeah... I though Pitter Patter was an easy baby (she was also born on a Sunday). Roo Roo has been even easier.

At some point, I will finish writing my birth story and post it.


Then this happened.
Fun Fact: Roo Roo and Pitter Patter were both baptized in the same gown that I
 was baptized in (and all the cousins on my mom's side).
My Grammy made it. It's beautiful, but we didn't get a good picture of it.

We had a small army of relatives and friends who came for the baptism. Amusingly, the Catholics who came for the purpose of attending the baptism were outnumbered something like 2:1 by non-Catholics. Daniel's whole family turned out.
 


And then I took about two... er three months off from blogging, to spend time just being Mommy. It was really great.

And those two months gave me some time to think about what I've been doing with this whole blogging thing, and I decided to indefinitely suspend the series that's been going on this blog since I started it.

I decided that writing that series was really getting in the way of me writing about all of the things I really wanted to write about.

Of course, now that I actually have a major story to tell in that vein (the vein of "stuff I really wanted to write about") I am afraid to tell it.

Go figure that the "good" story is the one I'm afraid to tell. It's something I'll have to discern, but I may share more details at some point.


I tried to resume participating in the Women's Bible Study at one of the nearby churches, but I never actually managed to keep up with the readings.

So... about a month ago, that bible study had our end-of-semester banquet, and I had planned on making crawfish etouffee (gluten-free!) the weekend before so that I could have even better leftover crawfish etouffee for the banquet. That way, while everyone else was having the gluten-y soup that I couldn't have, they'd all be jealous because I got crawfish etouffee!

That didn't happen. I was sick the whole weekend and I just didn't have the energy to spend three hours making roux over a hot stove. (Fun fact: you can make a good roux with gluten-free flour... it just takes about 1.5 times as long as your roux normally takes.)

So... I didn't have crawfish etouffee... and I knew I couldn't have the soup, so... I almost didn't go. Pitter Patter's nose was not quite clear from the last round of disease, and I was still coughing and sneezing... and I hadn't made my food to bring... and I was just about looking for any excuse I could find... but it was the last week of the year... and I wanted to see everyone that one last time...

So I sighed heavily, stuffed some less-than-appetizing power bars into the diaper bag, and decided that I was just going to have to somehow make the banquet be not about food. (Yeah, right.)

I didn't believe it was really possible, but there was this salad with kale and strawberries that was 100% safe and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, I afterward found out that people with less-than-ideal thyroid function (like people with Hashimoto's Disease) shouldn't eat much raw cruciferous vegetables because it affects the way your thyroid hormone is able to incorporate iodine. That is... raw kale and kale are now "sometimes" foods.


Aand... I'm pleased to share that I have conquered my pre-pregnancy weight. I now weight between three and four pounds less than I did when I got pregnant.

How?

For about a month I was eating a vegetarian meal for lunch every day. I was losing weight at a rate of about a pound each week - and definitely not feeling deprived.

I stopped doing the Apple + Veggie Crudites + Cheese cubes when I found out that I shouldn't be eating that much broccoli. I switched to kale-based salads.

Of course, a few weeks later, I found out that Kale is a cruciferous vegetable, too... and I haven't figured out what to replace it with that is equally convenient and available.


So... the pediatrician told us that if Pitter Patter wasn't consistently using the Potty by Thanksgiving, to give up until St. Patrick's Day. Okay, maybe those weren't her exact words... but it was pretty close.

And... I finally got sick of spending fifty bucks a month on disposables for Pitter Patter, so I bought her some cloth diaper pull-ups to use around the house while we're continuing to potty train.

Let me say, potty training is going abysmally. I've been working on an amazing post about how awful it's been. More on that later.


For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain't the Lyceum! 

3 comments:

  1. I found you from the 7 quick takes. I've been out of the blogging business fro nearly 10 months since my last baby. Some of them just knock you for a loop! It sounds like you are up and ready for action. I hope I'll see you around more!
    Oh, one thing that I have found that helps with potty training is to look at it s two separate skills, releasing is one skill and holding is another. Of course I don't know what your exact situation is, but when a kid is giving me trouble, even an accident on the floor is an opportunity to say, "Look, you let the pee come out! Good for you!" (Or maybe I can only say that on my best days and only in front of the bathtub, but it counts for something.)

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    1. Thanks for the advice!
      We had something of a breakthrough while we were traveling this weekend. We'll see if any of that success sticks around now that we're home again!

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  2. Stumbled across you at the 7QT linkup - 5 months is totally acceptable. I think my entire life passed out after #2 was born. It was such a hard transition for us.

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