Sunday, February 28, 2010

I left our camera in California

A few thoughts:


A while back, I took a logic class from this awesome hippie teacher: Chris Foster. He said that he was so annoyed when Americans acted as though the world owed us gold medals. He pointed out that in small countries, people dance on the streets when they win a medal. The United States already has enough going for it. We don't need to win the most gold medals. So I'm glad Canada won tonight's hockey match. It was their Olympics and their turn to shine.

I kind of hate Russia. I love their ballet, but the Kremlin scares me. I'm sad the Olympics is going to be there next time. I hope the US kicks their trash.

Summer now has four teeth, all of which have come in in the past two weeks. And to celebrate, Summer decided she needs to grind them together. Just the thought of that noise gives me the heebie jeebies, or however you spell that. If anyone has any tips on how to prevent babies from grinding their teeth together, pretty please let me know. (The internet basically says not to worry, it probably won't hurt her teeth. But I worry not for her teeth, but for myself and my sanity.)

People have been requesting pictures with Summer's teeth. I really don't think Summer is just going to smile and show the world her teeth when I take a picture, but when we get our camera back, I'll try.

When I was at Ikea a few days ago, I noticed that the rocking horse that Summer was playing with was not, in fact, a horse, but instead a moose. An employee walked by and I almost asked him, "So, you guys have a lot of Moose in Sweden?" Am I alone in thinking that all the employees of Ikea are Swedish?

What is the plural of moose? Moose? Mooses? Moosen?

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Saturday, February 20, 2010

What we did last weekend.

This is what we did last weekend.

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Wednesday, February 17, 2010

How To Lose Weight


From the time I was about six to the time I was 22 or 23, I was considered a chubby person. I don't think of myself as a lean mean machine now, but back then it was pretty bad. At one point as an undergrad, my BMI was 26, which is well into the "overweight" arena. This would be fine if I worked out and ate healthy, but I didn't. I remember buying a bag on mini twix, planning on sharing them with my friends and eating a few myself. An hour later I was staring at an empty bag in the library. My behavior was a hazard to my health, also. A friend had to do some body assessments for a class, and my blood pressure and heart rate had tipped into the unhealthy range.

I felt awful about my body. I wanted so badly to be skinny. I tried various diets and though they did have some effects, I always fell off the wagon and started eating like before. I felt like I had no willpower and no self-control.

I even tried diet pills. Yeah, soooo pathetic, I know. One time I bought some at Wal-Mart from the self check out line because I was so embarrassed about it. It totally backfired because in order to buy diet pills you have to show that you're over 18. The self check out guy came over to me when my register beeped and said, "I'm pretty sure you're 18, but I don't understand why you want to buy diet pills." I glanced at the people behind me in line who were, of course, staring at me. I got out of there fast, leaving my receipt behind. Naturally, I was carrying something that made the anti-theft alarm beep as I was leaving the store. When the octogenarian security guard made a huge (and loud) fuss of everything, I wanted to die. So that was my last time buying diet pills.

But that's not the point. The point is this: eventually I lost weight. I didn't do it by going on some diet. I did it by changing the person I was and refusing to allow a number on the scale to dictate whether or not I felt good about myself. The changes came after I broke off my engagement and without realizing it, I starting following the recommendations in this book:



It is awesome. I decided to write this post because I've been telling so many people about it. Really, I think everyone should know about it. Here are the 10 principles taken directly from their website:

10 Principles of Intuitive Eating

1. Reject the Diet Mentality Throw out the diet books and magazine articles that offer you false hope of losing weight quickly, easily, and permanently. Get angry at the lies that have led you to feel as if you were a failure every time a new diet stopped working and you gained back all of the weight. If you allow even one small hope to linger that a new and better diet might be lurking around the corner, it will prevent you from being free to rediscover Intuitive Eating.

2. Honor Your Hunger Keep your body biologically fed with adequate energy and carbohydrates. Otherwise you can trigger a primal drive to overeat. Once you reach the moment of excessive hunger, all intentions of moderate, conscious eating are fleeting and irrelevant. Learning to honor this first biological signal sets the stage for re-building trust with yourself and food.

3. Make Peace with Food Call a truce, stop the food fight! Give yourself unconditional permission to eat. If you tell yourself that you can't or shouldn't have a particular food, it can lead to intense feelings of deprivation that build into uncontrollable cravings and, often, bingeing When you finally “give-in” to your forbidden food, eating will be experienced with such intensity, it usually results in Last Supper overeating, and overwhelming guilt.

4. Challenge the Food Police .Scream a loud "NO" to thoughts in your head that declare you're "good" for eating under 1000 calories or "bad" because you ate a piece of chocolate cake. The Food Police monitor the unreasonable rules that dieting has created . The police station is housed deep in your psyche, and its loud speaker shouts negative barbs, hopeless phrases, and guilt-provoking indictments. Chasing the Food Police away is a critical step in returning to Intuitive Eating.

5. Respect Your Fullness Listen for the body signals that tell you that you are no longer hungry. Observe the signs that show that you're comfortably full. Pause in the middle of a meal or food and ask yourself how the food tastes, and what is your current fullness level?

6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor The Japanese have the wisdom to promote pleasure as one of their goals of healthy living In our fury to be thin and healthy, we often overlook one of the most basic gifts of existence--the pleasure and satisfaction that can be found in the eating experience. When you eat what you really want, in an environment that is inviting and conducive, the pleasure you derive will be a powerful force in helping you feel satisfied and content. By providing this experience for yourself, you will find that it takes much less food to decide you've had "enough".

7. Honor Your Feelings Without Using Food Find ways to comfort , nurture, distract, and resolve your issues without using food. Anxiety, loneliness, boredom, anger are emotions we all experience throughout life. Each has its own trigger, and each has its own appeasement. Food won't fix any of these feelings. It may comfort for the short term, distract from the pain, or even numb you into a food hangover. But food won't solve the problem. If anything, eating for an emotional hunger will only make you feel worse in the long run. You'll ultimately have to deal with the source of the emotion, as well as the discomfort of overeating.

8. Respect Your Body Accept your genetic blueprint. Just as a person with a shoe size of eight would not expect to realistically squeeze into a size six, it is equally as futile (and uncomfortable) to have the same expectation with body size. But mostly, respect your body, so you can feel better about who you are. It's hard to reject the diet mentality if you are unrealistic and overly critical about your body shape.

9. Exercise--Feel the Difference Forget militant exercise. Just get active and feel the difference. Shift your focus to how it feels to move your body, rather than the calorie burning effect of exercise. If you focus on how you feel from working out, such as energized, it can make the difference between rolling out of bed for a brisk morning walk or hitting the snooze alarm. If when you wake up, your only goal is to lose weight, it's usually not a motivating factor in that moment of time.

10 Honor Your Health--Gentle Nutrition Make food choices that honor your health and tastebuds while making you feel well. Remember that you don't have to eat a perfect diet to be healthy. You will not suddenly get a nutrient deficiency or gain weight from one snack, one meal, or one day of eating. It's what you eat consistently over time that matters, progress not perfection is what counts.

Wow, that was a really long quote. Sorry.

Anyway, get the book. You can get it for, like, five bucks on amazon.com.

Man, it's so hard to write a good blog post when you've got a baby yanking on the laptop screen.

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Monday, February 15, 2010

A tooth! Finally!

Six months is the average age for babies to get teeth, so we've been checking every day for a tooth for the past four months. Every day, nothing. But this morning, at nine and a half months old, Summer finally got a tooth. On her top right. I was starting to think we'd need to put her in special education, so you can imagine my relief. Last night was great and she wasn't any fussier than usual today or yesterday. So all those times she was upset and we were sure she was suffering teething pain? I'm thinking we were drugging her for no reason.

Oh, and there will be no picture of this tooth because Summer has serious issues with people looking at her mouth. Just ask her doctor who got repeatedly kicked in the face when she tried to look in our little girl's mouth.

Oh, and we're visiting Paul and Amy in California! Yesterday we went to see some redwoods and to Santa Cruz, which had some amazing waves. Today we went to San Francisco and ate some sourdough bread, which is actually better than the stuff you get at Wal-Mart. Then we went to half-moon beach? bay? where Amy learned how to surf once upon a time. Nathaniel picked up a massive piece of seaweed and decided to use it as a whip. We changed Summer's bum on the beach and I think she was grateful to get a little fresh air down there.

We brought a camera and had lots of good intentions, but no pictures. Maybe we'll get some from Paul and Amy and post them later.

UPDATE: This blog is clearly going downhill.

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Saturday, February 6, 2010

Measuring Cup


Summer,

That measuring cup was in the drawer. The drawer was closed. How did you get in the high chair?

Love,

Mommy
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Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Apparently I'm Starving My Child

Summer turned nine months today. Can you believe she has survived? I'm such a slacker that I am very impressed with myself. People thought I was nuts for being super paranoid when she was younger. I guess I should have explained to them that I knew I was going to slack off later, and I figured that when you average super paranoid with totally too relaxed you get just about right. But I probably wasn't paranoid enough.

I still have toxic poison in the cupboard below the sink. I really don't know where else to put it, but if I just started thinking about it instead of writing about it I'm sure I could find a solution. I felt pretty guilty about that until I read that the French are totally relaxed about child-proofing, and since I pretty much want to be French, I figure I'm doing all right.

And that's not all. Not all the outlets are covered, we have lamps that are just waiting to be shook and then toppled over, I have no idea what's on our floors, and the bathroom is basically a toxic waste dump. Oh, and I really have no idea when I feed Summer.

I nurse her when she wakes up and when she goes to bed, and then pretty much anything goes from there. I think, maybe, I sort of nurse her four times a day and feed her twice a day. As far as the times of these "meals," I have no idea. If she's hungry, I nurse her, unless I've nursed her recently, and then I give her solids. She seems happy.

Earlier today, I realized that Summer is just getting pickier and I'm going to have to plan meals for her the same way I plan meals for us. Which is rarely, but I have really good intentions to do so. And right now, I have the ingredients for a dozen different meals, so I feel prepared.

Anyway, the point of this post, aside from celebrating Summer's amazing survival skills, is to say that at her 9-month check-up, the doctor was worried about Summer's weight.

Oh, my goodness, the m key is sticking and of course I have a daughter with not one but two ms in her name! Let's just call her little one.

Her weight has gone from the 10th percentile to the 35th percentile to the 47th percentile to the 53rd percentile to the 27th percentile and now to the 10th percentile again. The curve does not look like it's supposed to.

Apparently, the rolls on her legs and her massive cheeks don't mean much.

So I get interrogated about how often I feed my child. I am not good with interrogations. I get nervous and confused and I always look guilty. If I ever get framed for murder, I'm screwed.

I felt so awkward about not knowing how much I give this child to eat. I just feed her until she seems okay. How much water do I give her? As much as she wants. Little babies know how much they need, right?

Ugh. So, I'm going back in for a weight check in a month, and I'm supposed to feed her three square meals a day, give her snacks, and be careful not to overdo the water.

But seriously, does this baby look like she's deprived to you?



P.S. I love being a mom. I love playing hide and seek with this girl. I love watching her gobble up her food after she smushes it in her hands. I love the way she absolutely refuses to allow the doctor to examine her mouth. I love the way her eyes light up when she sees her daddy. I love the way she will play with her book for minutes on end. I love Summer.

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