H2O September Challenge Begins Tomorrow!

So I've been feeling really sluggish lately, my skin has not been great, and my weight is not where I'd like it to be. I started examining my eating/drinking habits and realized - EUREKA - I do not drink enough water AT ALL. I mean, almost NONE. If I have a glass a day, that warrants a pat on the back.

I thought to myself, So what? Water can't be that important, right? WRONG. I did some research and found out these facts about good ol' H2O:

1) 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated.

2) Lack of water is the #1 trigger of daytime fatigue.

3) A mere 2% drop in body water can trigger fuzzy short-term memory, trouble with basic math, and difficulty focusing on the computer screen or on a printed page.

4) Water leads to overall greater health by flushing out wastes and bacteria.

5) Drinking 5 glasses of water daily decreases the risk of colon cancer by 45%, plus it can slash the risk of breast cancer by 79%, and one is 50% less likely to develop bladder cancer.

6) Water helps to maintain healthy body weight by increasing metabolism and regulating appetite.

7) Water naturally moisturizes skin and ensures proper cellular formation underneath layers of skin to give it a healthy, glowing appearance.

So after learning about these water facts, I decided to start an H2O Challenge! Please feel free to join me out there in bloggy land. I'll be drinking 6 glasses of water a day for the 30 days of September. That's 180 glasses! I know, I know, you may be saying but I thought we have to drink 8-10 glasses? Well I'm going from 1 glass a day to 6 so I think that will be enough of a challenge for now. It'll be tough, but I'm looking forward to all of the benefits. Not only will it help increase my weight loss, but my skin will look better, I'll have more energy to take care of my 6 month old cutie pie, and I'll feel healthier as a whole. So I'm really excited! I even created a ticker for this challenge! Wish me luck!

Our Sears Photo Shoot (proofs)

Our lovebug is 4 days shy of turning 6 months, so we thought that it was the perfect time to have our first family photo shoot! We had a great time. The baby was in a wonderful mood and was all smiles. (I was such a proud mama!) :)


I was surprised that he was so easily directed! All the photographer had to do was call his name and do a little baby talk and he was all gums!


The whole photo shoot was about an hour, and good thing too because he was completely spent after that. He whined for about 15 minutes until he fell asleep in my arms while we were picking out our favorite shots. There were a couple of pictures that I didn't like because of my own shortcomings, but once I saw how cute my son and hubby looked in all of them, I ignored the nonsense and just thanked God for such an amazing gift. What a great day!

Just a quick FYI - podcast coming soon!

The other day, I was creating my bucket list. You know, the list of things I'd like to do before I kick the bucket. Well, one of the things I had on there was to one day create a podcast about marriage, parenthood, and life in general. I kept saying I really wanna start a podcast but would never get around to doing it. FINALLY my hubby gave me a little nudge in the rear end. (I needed it!) He told me that he believed in my vision and that I should get started. And I thought to myself, You know what? He's right! So...

ALERT THE PRESS - In the next couple of weeks, my podcast will be up and running. ::trumpets:: I'm in the process of recording some episodes, and once I have a few of them under my belt, I will be uploading them to iTunes and the rest will be history! So you heard it from the horse's mouth folks! (hmm.. I never really liked that saying, but anyway..) The "Love, Life, and a Baby" podcast will be up and running by the end of September!

Baby Food Revisited

So I tried to make homemade baby food today and it didn't turn out as well as I thought it would. I tried to purée Pears. It was very time consuming and the Pears didn't purée as well as I wanted them to, so they were lumpy when I fed them to the baby. He liked it just the same, but I was nervous with all of the bits and pieces in it. I got some advice from the BabyCenter message boards, and now I won't be steaming the fruit in the microwave, I'll be baking them. It takes longer but they get completely mushy, and it's safer for the baby because I won't be microwaving plastic.

So the task for tomorrow: Pour 1-2 inches of water in a baking dish, cut Pears in half and put them middle side down, bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees, then purée in processor.

They're supposed to get really mushy and the baking will release all of the wonderful sweetness, yum! One good thing about Pears is that it has a wonderful effect on my little one's bowels! He was constipated for two days and having 2 ounces of Pear mush loosened everything right up! Nice!!

By the way, if anyone is interested in making homemade baby food, the best site out there is: http://wholesomebabyfood.com/ It not only gives you recipes, but tells you at what age it's safe for your baby to eat which foods. (For instance, around 6 months, the best first foods are Apples, Pears, Avocados, and Bananas) It also answers questions like how to preserve the food, how long it lasts, etc. Great resource!!

ETA: 8/25 - 2:00pm - My homemade Pears Baby Food came out perfect this time! The baking worked wonders! I cut the Pears in half, baked them in 2 inches of water, peeled and chopped them, then puréeed them for 10 seconds with 1/3 cup sterilized water. The results? Creamy, yummy, sweet, goodness! Baby loved them! The two pears I puréed ended up making 4 servings of baby food! (Each serving had about 2 ounces in it.) All in all, I'm glad I didn't give up cuz now that I know what to do, I'm gonna be a purée monster! lol Next week is avocados. Can't wait! They don't have to be steamed first, just very ripe. I'm looking forward to it!

Wow, a bloggy award! Thanks!

So my Blogger/BabyCenter friend, Tricia, gave me a blog award! I feel so honored! Hehe! So now, I have to share seven things about myself and then I pass this award onto nine other bloggers. Er.. I don't have nine other bloggers to share it with I don't think but I'll figure something out. :)

1. I secretly (well not so secret anymore) want to train to run a 5k race. I've always admired marathon runners. The dedication and endurance is amazing! But the furthest I've ran is down the block to catch up to Mr. Softee. Ya I have my work cut out for me.

2. I just learned about Kettle Corn THIS YEAR. How could this gift from God stay hidden from me for so long?! Oh the blissful mix between salty and sweet! And this buttery delight is only 1 weight watchers point per cup! ::faints:: I'm actually typing with one hand right now because the other hand is stuck in a bowl of Kettle Corn - and I'm trying not to butter up the computer keys. (It's not working very well)

3. During my pregnancy, I developed stinky sweaty feet. Ridiculous! It was the wacky hormones, ugh! But the worse part is, the issue hasn't quite left the building yet hehe. It's already been almost 6 months post partum! Gee wiz! I'm always telling the hubby "Break out the foot soak!"

4. Sometimes I dream of Big Macs. This is another thing left over from the pregnancy. When I was pregnant, I had some serious cravings for beef. Beef was the hilight of my day. I ate a Big Mac 3x/week or so towards the end of my third trimester. And every so often I have dreams of little Big Macs dancing on my tongue. Yum yum! In real life I wouldn't dare eat it because it's 13 weight watcher points! Maybe I should somehow plan for it though because my mouth is watering just typing about it! ::wipes laptop down::

5. Okay only one more pregnancy reference. For some reason I have COMPLETELY forgotton the extent of pain that I was in for 30+ hours during labor. Many people say that God wipes the pain away from our memories so we'll do it again. And I'm really starting to believe that's true! A month after delivery, I told hubby that I wouldn't even think of having another kid for at least 5 years because of the pain, healing, etc. Well guess what? Last week I was bargaining with him about TTC (Trying to Conceive) in the next 2 yrs or so. I'd try again in a couple of months if we were financially stable! Crazy huh!

6. I love spas. I love facials, back massages, body wraps, saunas, foot rubs, manicures, pedicures, THE WORKS! I've actually contemplated opening up a spa of my own. After thinking about how much time, effort, and money that will entail, I decided that I'd rather save up $5,000 and create a Spa Room one day when we buy a house. Then I'd hire a massage therapist who would just come twice a week and work on me privately. I can't wait!

7. My hubby and I are thinking of creating our very own podcast about marriage, parenthood, and life in general. I think we both just LOVE to hear ourselves talk that this would be the perfect hobby for us to satisfy that craving. I'll keep everyone updated when we finally get things off the ground. :)


Okay so here are the blogs that I feel deserve this award. Check 'em out when you can!

Natalie
Rosie
Christina
Amber
Toni
RosesDaughter

Weight Watchers has called me back home!

BabProject - Week 10 (I think) - So I skipped on writing two weeks worth of BabProject (Body After Baby Project) posts. Sorry! it was basically because I was down on myself for doing so poorly and not having anything positive to report. But now, I am on top of the world! I decided to re-join Weight Watchers, and that was the best decision ever. I was reluctant to do it before because of money issues, but the day I went online to join, there was a deal where registration was only $1. So I had to do it!

So far I'm doing really well. In two weeks, I've lost 5 lbs! That is awesome because I was at a stale mate for about a month since I stopped breastfeeding and wasn't really burning any extra calories. But for some reason, there is something about the weekly meetings that motivates me every time. I guess it's just the idea of getting weighed in and seeing in my little booklet the progress (or lack thereof) that drives me. And some may say "well maybe you'll end up not going all together to avoid weigh ins." For me, that's not an option because We're already on a tight budget, and we're paying $40/month for me to do this, so it's important that I use every last dime's worth by going each week.

Months before we conceived, I joined Weight Watchers for the first time, and lost about 15 lbs. Then I got pregnant, cancelled my membership, and quickly became a member of the "wacky cravings club". So back I go, to the wonderful home I call Weight Watchers. I can't wait to see how much weight I can lose this time around. My goal is to lose another 20 lbs by the new Year. That's 5 lbs per month. I already reached this month's goal of 5 lbs, hopefully I can keep it up. Eventually I want to get into working out again. I'm still so exhuasted for some reason - oh wait, I know why, it's called "my little munchkin gets my head spinning". So thinking of going on my stair master for even 15 minutes makes me yawn and want to curl up under the covers with a good book. We'll see what happens. I'm going to try to go as long as I can with just counting points LOL and around the time I start to get to a plateau, I'll pull out the big guns and start working out 3x/week. Hey, I'm being real with myself. No use making all these goals when I know that right now I don't have any intentions of keeping the exercise one. But the counting points I can do, and so far I've been doing that well! So exciting!

Ahh, the Joys of Baby Food!

My little munchkin is almost 6 months old already! Whoa, where did the time go! He is so fun to be around now. He has a great personality and will get people's attention in the elevator, at the park, anywhere you can think of! Ya, he can be a pain in the patoot sometimes, but then he'll give this adorable gummy grin and I melt all over again!

And what's even more fun - He began solid baby food! He's been having rice cereal mixed with formula for about 6 weeks now, but last week we tried some apple sauce and BOY DID HE LOVE IT. We made sure to get the Mott's natural organic no sugar added brand, and started him off with a tablespoon. Well this little foodie began crying when the applesauce was done so we had to give him more hehe. (Just like his mama!)

The doc said that we can introduce one new baby food each week. So next week I decided to make my own Pear baby food. We got a baby food processer as a baby shower gift so I figure why not try to put it to good use. This is the recipe I found:

Homemade Pear Mash

Ingredients:
1 ripe pear
Rice Cereal (optional)


1. Peel and de-seed a fully ripened pear
2. Cut into chunks
3. Steam pear chunks on the stove or use ziploc microwave steamer bags for 3-5 min.
4. Puree pear chunks
5. Add rice cereal (if desired) to thicken up.
6. Serve at room temperature
7. Freeze leftovers in ice-tray (if making a big batch)

I can't wait to try it! I will definitely be using the ziploc baggies to steam the pears because I do not trust myself trying to figure out whether they are steamed enough or burnt. I hear that its pretty easy to make your own baby food because as long as you can steam them properly and puree them down to mush, you can feed your baby any of the stage 1 foods. So this is the order of how I plan on introducing foods:

Week 1 - Applesauce (complete!)
Week 2 - Pears
Week 3 - Avocado
Week 4 - Bananas
Week 5 - Carrots
Week 6 - Sweet Potatoes

I'll blog about our progress, and will put up some baby food eating pics! That should be interesting LOL

So I fell back on my diet but a new plan arises!

BABProject - Week 7 - So I skipped a blog entry for BABProject last week. I guess I was really busy between taking care of baby and my internship. But truth be told, it probably was because I had such a huge set back with my diet that I was too depressed to even write about it. I actually gained all the weight back that I lost 2 weeks ago. It's very discouraging! It takes less than half the time to gain weight than it does to lose it. Part of it is that Aunt Flow is rearing her ugly head once again so I'm sure it's water weight and all that jazz. But it's still annoying to see that number on the scale.

The good news is, I've decided to go back to a macrobiotic way of eating. Macrobiotics "from "macro" (large) and "bios" (life), is a dietary regimen that involves eating grains as a staple food supplemented with other foodstuffs such as vegetables and beans, and avoiding the use of highly processed or refined foods." It's a Japanese inspired way of eating. My hubby and I started eating this way while trying to conceive last year and lost 10 lbs each, as well as had a lot of energy, and ended up making a baby so I guess it works! I am re-reading this book "The Hip-Chick's Guide to Macrobiotics" and it talks about how eating a balanced diet of yin and yang foods will make you feel better physically and emotionally, as well as allow your body to drop weight naturally. The author,Jessica Porter, lost 50 lbs without starving herself. She just changed what she ate, as well as the combination of things she ate. To learn more about Macro eating, click on: Macrobiotics.

So my new goal for this week is:

Drink 6-8 glasses of water per day
Get back into Macro eating
Exercise 3 times
Lose 2 lbs

My reward will be to get the new makeup that I've been wanting for weeks! :)