Monday, May 7, 2012

I'm Back!

So I return to you after four months of maternity leave, reporting live from my living room floor with my precious baby girl entertaining herself on her play mat. She has finally discovered how to bat at toys with her hands and consequently has given me time to write the blog post I've been hankering to write for weeks.

I thought I'd update you on my 2012 goals. I also plan on writing a post that shares the"wisdom" I've attained from my three months of motherhood. I'm laughing at how self-important I sound in that last sentence.

So my goals:

Goal #1: Be a happy healthy mother

My nose became ENORMOUS during pregnancy! It's already pretty large, but not usually so cartoonishly large.

Progress: Well I certainly have the happy part down. I love being a mom. I am so grateful that Danny was sent to Canada and has a job that makes it possible for me to stay home with my little love all day. I don't think there is a nicer feeling in the world than kissing the soft, downy head of a newborn over and over and over again.

It is also nice to know that having a baby doesn't have to turn you into a raging hormonal monster. I'm still pretty go with the flow. I haven't snapped at anyone. I don't worry constantly about all the terrible things that could happen to my baby. I love my baby completely but she doesn't define me. I am as happy as I've ever been, but that happiness isn't due solely to her existence.

As for the healthy part of the equation: meh.

I ate chocolate cake for breakfast this morning. To be fair, I made the cake myself and it had 2 cups of cooked quinoa in it so it had some protein in it, but the benefits of the protein were probably mitigated by the sugar cups of sugar and butter in the cake.

The super yummy moist chocolate was from this cookbook I adore called Quinoa 365: The Everyday Superfood. I got it at Costco and I love the soups from it, especially the light mushroom soup, but as you can see I'm telling you all about this cookbook to avoid admitting that I have been a terrible role model of healthy eating and exercise for my girlie.

I only lost ten pounds from the thirty I put on during pregnancy. I've been told by other mom's that the only way they dropped the rest of the weight is by doing about two hours of cardio a day. Yikes.

Babies sleep a lot so it can't be too hard for a stay at home mom to get those two hours in, right? Wrong.

My baby sleeps for no longer than 45 minutes at a time making it hard to get that workout in. Breastfeeding leaves me in a constant state of hunger. Plus, I'm lazy. So the weight is taking awhile to come off.

I read in the book, Bringing Up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman, that French women give themselves three months to lose the baby weight. How I wish I was French!



So here are some of the actions I've taken to keep myself from gaining further weight:

I have turned my family's TV addiction into opportunities to get some exercise in to our day. I'm going to do a whole post on this later because my methodology for this one is a little different from the usual method of running on a treadmill while watching your favorite show. That obviously doesn't work when you have a baby demanding to be held every fifteen minutes.

If I was once a bikini-wearing, slim and toned person, I think this hard to lose weight would be devastating. But I'm about as heavy now as I've been during some particularly chunky years of my life. It doesn't feel great being overweight, but it also doesn't feel hopeless. I can't cry about never getting back into skinny jeans because I never was able to wear skinny jeans. It's a weird silver lining but I'll take it!

Progress towards goal #1 is slow but steady.

Goal #2: Stop Being Afraid of Spanish

Donde esta la biblioteca? Aqui! Me, in Honduras learning Spanish before anything related to Spanish made me throw up.


As I've shared before, I was learning Spanish in Honduras during early pregnancy and somehow developed this weird association with Spanish and morning sickness. Anytime I would practice after leaving Honduras, I felt nauseated. I became AFRAID of Spanish.

I'm still afraid of Spanish. I meant to start taking lessons again using Skype but my baby still doesn't have a napping schedule making it hard to know what hour of the day I have free for Skype Spanish lessons.

I have found some great resources for teaching yourself how to speak Spanish using telenovelas. There is an article explaining how to do this here. I'm going to try it out and if it works I'll report back.

I have some great little Spanish/English books I read to Ellie each day, but I know it's not enough to teach her or myself very much.

Progress towards goal #2 is slow and unsteady.

Goal #3: Increase readership of this blog


I don't know what to say here.

There are too many blogs like this out there. The internet is saturated with more interesting versions of me, and these folks have found a way to monetize this compulsion to serialize their life.

This pin from pinterest says it all:


Source: simplemom.net via Jayme on Pinterest


Progress towards goal #3: fail.


3 comments:

Jonathan Bennett said...

"Increase readership of this blog"

Well, at the very least you have me, an occasional reader. :)

- Jon B.

Starr said...

I'm late to the party, but I love reading your blog. And I've been eagerly awaiting your return! :)

Jayme said...

I didn't even realize I had comments! Thanks guys!