Mamma Mia!

I’m very late on this blog entry! I’ve been fighting a cold for 12 days now. I just don’t remember colds lasting as long as the colds I’ve gotten in the past two years. I had five, yes five 2-week-long colds last year when I was pregnant with Ty and that was MISERABLE because of all of the extra mucous production from being pregnant. This year, despite all the germs in the house with the kids, I’ve managed to avoid a real cold until now. One of my biggest pet peeves are hearing people (these tend to be older men) snorting because of phlegm in the back of their throat. Have you ever sat next to someone in a meeting or on an airplane when they are doing this? It makes me want to throw up. Now here I am doing it. Blech.

Last weekend Brian started the Michael Thurmond 6-day body makeover diet. Michael Thurmond is the guy I like from the Extreme Makeover show because he seems to know a lot of about muscles, fitness, losing weight, and diet and approaches it holistically. He promises you will drop one size and kick-start your metabolism. Here is a sample menu for the day:

Breakfast – beef with some egg whites
Mid-morning snack – Chicken
Lunch – Beef with some greens
Mid-afternoon snack – Chicken
Dinner – Beef or Chicken with a handful of blueberries and a ½ cup of rice
After dinner snack – Chicken

I enjoy some meat every now and then but there is no way I could choke down this much meat in 6 days. At first I thought I would try this with Brian but by Sunday night, I was starving and promptly ate a tomato and mozzarella salad. Technically you’re not supposed to do the diet if you’re breastfeeding so thankfully I had an excuse to fall of the wagon in a few hours. Brian stuck with it and ended up losing 5 lbs! Amazing. He said he will do it with me after I wean Ty. I decided that I needed to eat more protein throughout the day so I have two protein shakes with me here at work to have as a mid-morning snack and mid-afternoon snack.

Jack started his terrible two’s with a vengeance last weekend. It is not so much tantrums as it is downright defiance. He says “no” to everything we tell him to do which equates to lots of warnings for a time-out (Supernanny always says give them one warning and the next time they do it, it’s a time-out). We are extremely consistent with following through with the threat so a lot of times, the threat alone works. However, more and more he ends up in time-out. I think he is constantly testing us to see if we are going to follow through. I read somewhere that time-outs shouldn’t be a form of punishment, just a vehicle to move your child away from the circumstance and that if your child perceives that it’s punishment then you should sit there with them! I think that’s a load of crap. It’s partly to remove them from the circumstance but I don’t want it to be fun. I don’t think sitting in a corner for 2 minutes and not liking it is going to damage their little psyches.

Brian and I had our 6th anniversary on February 26. We went to a great little French restaurant called Coup de Tartes which is a BYOB place. This means you can bring your wine and focus on spending your money on food. It was delicious and was interesting to see how people brought their wine in (most had little wine bags) and what they were drinking. It only has 12 tables so you have to make reservations to get a table. Ann baby-sat for us and seemed to have a good time playing with Jack. And he seemed OK that someone he didn’t know was going to be putting him to bed.

I started playing volleyball again. I joined the work league and played my first game on Thursday night. Because Brian’s game overlapped with mine, we had to get a baby-sitter and used a new neighborhood girl who lives across the street. I didn’t get a chance to warm up and my back started seizing on me. I continued to play, ignoring the pain. We won both of our games and I started playing a third but was worried about my back getting worse so I stopped playing. I did get in to see the chiropractor on Friday and he was able to work it out a little bit. It’s still sore in some place. I feel old.

On Friday night I went to the House of Tricks (restaurant) with my mom’s club. This is my mom’s club that I joined when I had Jack and although I don’t get to see the moms very often, we always have a great time when we meet out for dinner. We sat outside and the orange blossoms smelled really good. We were laughing so much the other customers were staring at us. It was 10:30 when we finally left! On Saturday I went to register Jack and Ty for Infant Swimming Resource (ISR) swimming lessons. These are special lessons where you take your child every day for 5 – 6 weeks and they get a 10 minute private lesson. They are very focused on survival swimming—floating on their backs, then on their tummies, and then on their backs again to breathe. Jack quickly learned these skills last year and now he needs a refresher for 2 – 3 weeks. They teach kids as young as 6 – 8 months so I am taking Ty as well. They start June 19. Because of the limited spots and because I needed very specific spots after work, I stood in line for 2 hours! And I got the very last spots after 5 PM so I’m glad I stood in line but it felt kind of silly to do that. What we do as parents! I remember standing in line overnight in college to get a parking space in a coveted garage and the man in front of me was standing there for his college aged daughter. Now that’s ridiculous.

On Saturday afternoon we went to Joe and Jill’s house for dinner. Jill made delicious chicken and mango crepes. The kids all seemed to get along even though they were different ages. Ty and Jill’s daughter Tatum were especially cute hanging out together. Jack managed to crap in his pants and it went all the way up the back. So we had to borrow a shirt and have him run around in his pull up. Fortunately people with kids don’t seem very fazed by these mishaps. We ended up staying later than anticipated (1 hour past Ty’s bed-time!) because we were having such a good time.
Ty and his girlfriend, Tatum
Ty and Tatum in a compromising position




On Sunday I had brunch with Missie. We go to the same place at the same time on Sundays about every month. After eating our regular brunch meals at the Cheesecake Factory, we went through the mall and I got free makeup samples from Origins and $23 worth of hand soap from Bath and Body Works for $10 so I felt like my cavewoman gathering instincts were satisfied. We could have stayed there for hours but I started feeling too guilty for leaving Brian home with the boys since I had so many activities this weekend. I topped off the weekend by seeing “Mamma Mia” at Gammage. That is my all-time favorite Broadway musical and I highly recommend it. Everyone leaves happy and singing. That’s what Broadway musicals should be all about.