Waffle Party Recap.

A couple months before Lily's birthday, I asked her what kind of party she wanted.  Dora, Doc McStuffins, Princess, etc.  She picked Doc McStuffins (shocker!).

Other than the invitations, cake and a few things like plates and napkins, I didn't do much by way of an actual "Doc McStuffins" party.  Joel did pick up this balloon for Lily.  Which she loved!

I thought about all these related games we could do but as I was thinking about the food choice (see below) I was getting overwhelmed with trying to do too much and quickly decided that the kiddos can just play with one another and enjoy each other's company and that was enough this time around.

When planning the party, I was racking my brain for what food to serve.  It's Lily's birthday, after all, so it should be something she likes.  Problem is, she doesn't like much!  PB&J and "print-zels," anyone?  Anyone?  No?

I thought, what about waffles?!  The kids always eat supper when I fix waffles!  Then I thought, can I pull this off?  Waffles for 25 people?  I don't want to serve everyone a bunch of soggy waffles.  Yuck.  After conferring with my husband, party planner extraordinaire (ha!), he convinced me it could be done.  So I got pretty excited about it.

We served all the fixins appropriate for some pretty nice waffles, if I do say so myself.  Blueberries, raspberries, pecans, chocolate chips, strawberries, maple syrup, whipped cream, peanut butter.  To drink we had juice boxes, chocolate milk, skim milk, soy milk, orange juice, mimosas and coffee!  Whew.

I collected up a bunch of waffle irons so I could have several going at once.  I found out that 3 waffle irons was definitely my limit.  And probably more like 2 waffle irons was the limit on the circuitry in our house since we blew a fuse halfway through the waffle making.

The night before the party, I oven fried 6 pounds of bacon.  SIX POUNDS.  That is a lot of bacon.  I wish I would have taken a picture of that.  Just so I could drool later.

After all that, Lily sits down to eat and DOESN'T EAT ANY WAFFLES!!!  Are you kidding me??  I think she takes about 2 bites of fruit and then abandon's eating all together.  If I weren't so caught up in cooking waffles for the rest of the 20 guests, I think I might have cried!

However, all is not lost, about 30 minutes later, once everyone else is pretty much done eating and it's nearly time to open presents, Lily decides that she's ready to eat some waffles.  And did she ever!

After that we opened presents.  Lily got lots and lots of goodies.

And just a few pics of Tyler-man, who was trying to get in on the present opening action.

And finally, we finished up the day with cake and ice cream.  Again Lily wouldn't blow out the candles.  In fact, she told me not to put them on her cake at all!  But I just couldn't get past singing happy birthday with no candles, so I put them on anyway.  Then I waited and waited for her to blow them out.  I tried to enlist one of her cousins to help.  No one was interested.  I finally blew them out.  I wonder if that means I'm due for some extra birthday wishes this year?

Happy 3rd Birthday, my baby girl!!!

Three hands.

I've been knitting some new mittens for myself.  They are convertible mittens - so they are open at the fingers and then they have a flap that flips open and closed.  The idea is, I don't have to take my gloves off to buckle the kids in their car seats or to make a phone call or whatever.  I just flip the flap.

I got the mittens done, except for the flap part, so I went ahead and wore them one day.  Lily noticed my new gloves and commented that she liked them.

Then, one evening when I started knitting the flap part, Lily came over to me:

LILY:   Mommy, you don't have three hands!

ME:  Huh?  No, I don't have three hands.

LILY:  Then why are you making another glove?

I was completely blown away by this little conversation!  I wish I were actually good at this whole blogging/writing thing so that I could eloquently or cleverly explain why I was so blown away.  But the bottom line is that, this was one of those parenting moments where I'm like:

Holy shit!  Would you look at this little genius we're raising?! 

She sees something she doesn't quite reconcile.  

She makes an assumption.  She tests her assumption.  

She's learning how to reason and think things through beyond just step 1.

My heart is going to explode with pride!

My cheeks are cramping from smiling so hard!
I'm such a dork!!

And, by the way, I sure do wish I had three hands some times.

(photo cred to Jennifer Elsass)

Thoughtful Husband. Uncooperative Wife.

 

Yesterday morning, these flowers were on my desk along with a really nice card and a gift certificate for a massage from my wonderful husband!

 

It was a "Congratulations for meeting your big weight loss goal / I know you've been really stressed out lately from work and party planning and oh yeah, life" gift.  Isn't he wonderful?  Sigh...

 

But I inadvertently messed up his plans to surprise me.

 

The night before the drop off, in the midst of cooking dinner and Lily whining and Tyler crying, Joel asked me if I had to go to Seymour the next day.  Which is totally unusual for him to ask me this or care.  I said no, I'll be a Plant 1 in the morning and COB in the afternoon.  Plant 1 is where my desk is.  But it's a HUGE building and I had meetings the whole morning so I never went to my desk.

 

So a few hours in to the morning Joel's texting me - presumably because I haven't yet called to thank him for the flowers I didn't know I got.  He's asking me what I'm up to.  And have I gone to the COB yet.  And then he calls me but I can't answer cause I'm in this meeting.  So he wants another hour and calls me again but I'm still in the meeting.

 

Now I'm getting annoyed because I don't know he keeps calling me and I'm stressed out cause the meeting I'm in isn't going well and blah blah.  The meeting ends and I run to my car to head to the next thing and I call Joel back.

 

He asks me if I'm headed to my desk and I'm like, "NO!  NO!  NO!  I'm not headed to my desk!  I DON'T have TIME!  I'm so late for my next thing!  And I have to eat lunch!  And I'm so stressed out!!  And why are you bugging me about my desk?!!?" 

 

He's like, "Well, I was kinda hoping you would be going to your desk today.  Cause I kinda left something there for you.  So you need to stop by there before you come home tonight."

 

Whoopsie!  Well if that isn't enough to bring me down off of my stress-induced rant, I don't know what is!!

 

That afternoon, while I was in meetings in another building, 3 separate coworkers checked in with me to see if I going to be at my desk at all that day.  My coworkers had Joel's back! 

 

In my defense, the last time Joel left something on my desk was BEFORE we were actually dating.  And, this is the first time he's ever gotten me flowers.  So my dense moments of not realizing I needed to go my desk from his "subtle hints" weren't entirely unwarranted. 

 

He's an awfully sweet guy.  He loves me.  He takes care of me when I'm having a rough time and celebrates me when I've had a success.  He's a good one.  I think I'll keep him. 

What our three year old is up to.

Lily had her 3 year check up today.

 

Her stats

Height: 3'4" (96% percentile)

Weight: 36.8 pounds (93%)

Clothes:  She's busting out of a 4T in most brand of clothes

Shoes:  Size 8 (in wide width if you can find it)

  

A few fun things about our 3 year old:

 

She's addicted to TV. She watches 1 show in the mornings (or part of one) while I fix her hair and while I get Tyler ready. Then after school, we allow her to watch 1 show which is about 20-25 minutes of TV and then we turn it off. At least, that's what we TRY to do. Sometimes, when Joel and/or I have are having a bad day or a particularly low patience day, she might get lucky enough to watch 2 shows. When I pick her up from daycare, they have "stations" set up in the gym and the kids can pick which thing they want to play with. Lily is ALWAYS at the TV station. Half the time, she's the only one sitting there. All those toys and friends and running around and she picks the TV.

  

She's a full head taller than everyone in her class except 1 boy. He might have a half inch on her.

  

She knows all the main colors and shapes. She can recognize all letters of the alphabet and even makes some of the letters using blocks (the easy ones like L, T and I). Counting is still her weakest point. She can count to 12 reliably but after that it's a crapshoot. She's also not very strong in actually counting objects. It's not because she can't, she's just kind of impatient (I know!  My daughter, impatient!  Unbelievable!) when it comes to pointing to each thing one at a time and counting.

  

She's totally capable of dressing herself but won't do it most of the time.

She likes to know what day of the week it is and what month it is.  She knows I play volleyball on Mondays and she knows she doesn't have school on Saturdays and Sundays.

 

She loves to go shopping. Even Walmart.

She asks me regularly if we can go to Walmart when I pick them up from daycare.

 

(anybody else freaked out by this photo???)

 

She's very in to "much." 

"I want much." 

"No, I said MUCH much." 

"I gave a bite to Tyler and now I don't have much!"

 

She's pretty much in charge of the radio in the car.

"I don't like that song Mommy. Change it to a new song."

"I like this song Mommy."

"Mommy, play that Friday night song." (Eric Paslay, Friday Nights)
"It's too loud."
"It's not very loud."
Or her favorite game "Name That Tune:"
Lily: "What's this song?"

Me: "I don't know."

Lily: "But what's it called, Mommy?"

Me: "I don't know, Lily, just listen."

Lily: "I am listening! ....... But what's it called?!"

 

The pictures from this post are from Lily's new camera.  The quality is HORRID.  I guess that's what you get for $35.  If she keeps it up with the picture taking and manages not to break her camera within a week, maybe we'll upgrade to a $100 camera next time around. 

 

Losing Jackson....

.....holding 8 lbs of weights.

That's how much weight I've lost!

That's 52.4 pounds!!  Fifty!  Two!  (point four!) Pounds!

 

Ok enough with the exclamation points.  But I am very excited. 

 

 

BMI reduced by 9.3 points

Body fat reduced by 8.2%

 

Thighs:  -4.5 inches

Arms:  -1.5 inches

Boobs:  -5.75 inches

Waist:  -8 inches

Hips:  -6.5 inches

 

 

Throughout this diet, I've had a lot of little goals along the way:
 

** fitting in to specific clothes I love **

** weighing less than my 6'5" husband (uh yeah, I'm 5'4"....pretty bad that was even a goal, huh?) **

** losing my Tyler baby weight **

** getting my wedding band on **

** getting my wedding band and engagement ring on at the same time **

 

 When I started Weight Watchers back in late June I didn't really have an end game in mind.  It was more about these little goals.  After the first three months, when I had made some pretty significant progress, I decided my next major goal would be to lose all the weight I had gained from eating my way through two pregnancies.  And I wanted to do it by Lily's 3rd birthday.

  

That roughly amounted to about 1 lb per week on average which was a very realistic goal.  Especially considering that Fall Festival, Vacation, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years all fell in that time frame.  It was inevitable that there would be gain weeks. 

 

 

But each time, I just hit the mental reset button, kept on going and chipping away at my goal.  And now I've made it! 

That sounds kind of final.  Well, let me be clear.  I'm not done.  I have several more goals ahead of me - so here's to some major progress and the mental stamina to keep working toward my next goal!

 

  And now, for some bragging on my 3 year old.  She took all of the following pictures.  By herself.  Using our big ol' camera (this was before she got her new camera).  She was giving me directions on the pose she was after.  Can you believe it?