Weekend round up

That was definitely a busy and tiring few days.

Saturday was supposed to be a quiet day as we knew once we set of to L&T’s we wouldn’t get much rest. It didn’t happen that way though. The morning was spent searching for the photo album’s mum had lent us (me aged 0-4), and the afternoon was packing and Mr H fixing up his bike to take up so he could go out with T yesterday. We didn’t get to bed until 11:30. Not nice when we were up at 5:30!

The munchkin slept on until 6 but woke for the potty and with us up wouldn’t go back to sleep. We managed to get the car packed and us all breakfasted reay to leave at 7. For what I think is the first time ever we didn’t have any delays or slow sections of the motorway to contend with. We were up at L&T’s just before 10. We had time for a cuppa and for Mr H and the munchkin to change before we all headed off to the church. The service was lovely, though I spent most of it following the munchkin around the church and taking her out to use the potty! Back at L&T’s L put on a fantastic spread. Salads, bread, meat, hot nibbles, dips, gorgeous cakes and biscuits. It was great to see the family, only one of my uncles and a couple of my male cousins were missing. Sadly the weather, while dry most of the day, was quite grey. We did sit outside under the gazebos as it was fairly warm, but we did need jackets by about 5. The munchkin loved running around the garden and trying to play with baby J. She did manage to get her foot soaked in the pond. Thankfully she didn’t get any further! Most people left by about 6. We put the munchkin and baby J in the bath together and then put the munchkin down to sleep in L&T’s bed.

That was not our best plan. We though she’d sleep well there and then when we got her up to move her to the hotel she’d settle well again there….but no! She settled to sleep fine, we got her into the car at about 9:30 without too much fuss but when we got to the hotel….oh dear… Even though they knew there were three of us in the room the single bed hadn’t been made. So off we go, get the sheets out of the wardrobe, make the bed. All the while the munchkin is wandering round waking up more and more. We get the bed made and get her settled down. Mr H and I go and sit in the en suite to try and give the munchkin some peace and quiet to go to sleep in. 15 mins later I admit defeat and go into the room to go to bed. The munchkin’s still not asleep, it’s now 11pm. She clambers in with us for a hug. Mr H complains about the mattress on his side of the bed. The munchkin is almost asleep in the double bed. Mr H gets into the single, he’s comfy, then he decides he wants to share the bed with me. Due to him needing a decent night’s sleep since he’ll have to drive home the next day we swap sides of the bed and put the munchkin back into the single. I can understand why he didn’t want to sleep on ‘his’ side of the bed, it was awful! We all eventually got to sleep at arond midnight. Mr H was awake and reading just after 7, I woke then as well as he was using his torch and facing me. The munchkin managed to sleep until just after 8. We had a leisurely get up, we put a dvd on the laptop to keep the munchkin entertained and relaxed a bit more. 

We made it to L&T’s for a late breakfast before Mr H and T packed their mountain bikes into the car and headed off for some boy time. I sat and played with baby J and the munchkin (and was reminded how hard it is to butter bread while carrying a wriggly 6 month old) until L returned from shopping for more food for the afternoon’s BBQ. T was in charge of the BBQ as L had sorted the family party on Sunday. By 12:30 L was getting very stressed as the boys hadn’t returned and T still needed to clean the BBQ. The boys returned tired and sweaty at 1 with enough time left for showers and BBQ cleaning before the party started at 2. This was a party for all their friends as they wanted to celebrate J’s christening with them as well and there wasn’t space for everyone on Sunday. There were lots of little people and lots of bumps. At one point I was the only woman out of the 5 outside not sporting a bump! I was a little jealous but I know our time will come againa t some point. Most of L’s friends from her NCT group came along. All the babies are 5/6 months old. One of them is 5 1/2 months and weighs 20 lbs! The munchkin only weighs 24 lbs and she was 2 1/2 last week…

People trickled in and out as the afternoon went on. The last ones left at about 6:30, which left Mr H, the munchkin and I. We left at 7 (hoping to miss the worst of the bank holiday traffic returning to the London area), with a parting gift of lots of biscuits (L&T had a lot of left over food yesterday). Amazingly the return journey was as clear as the journey up and we were home by 10. The munchkin slept for the first 2 1/2 hours and went straight to bed when we got home, not waking until after 7 today.

It was a fantastic weekend. L and I got on better than we often do, which was lovely. It was great to see my parents again. They’d been staying with L&T for part of last week so left yesterday morning. Dad is now suffering with facial paralysis (it developed as the drove down to L&T’s). The doctor in L’s village thinks it is Bell’s Palsy though Mum thinks it may be another stroke. He’s been given steriods to take, but he’s not really wanting to take more medication, Mum has a hard time reminding him to take his cholesterol and blood pressure tablets everyday. It wasn’t as noticeable as Mum and L had lead me to believe (they said his face was quite droopy) until Dad blinked when only one eye closed. He was even more subdued and just sat quietly with my gran, his brother, nephew and niece for most of the party on Sunday. He’s lost so much confidence over the past year. It’s not nice seeing him like this, and knowing he’s not going to get better, only worse. It’s just something we have to live with now.

We did eat a lot over the weekend, but my hard work on the diet last week definitely paid off, I lost 1/2lb this week! I just need to keep the momentum going now.

 

Quick Wednesday ramblings

Good afternoon! Just a quick update here today. Diet going fine. Fitness class this morning was a killer. The munchkin’s movement class this afternoon wasn’t a lot better. I’m certainly going to ache tomorrow. Mr H is shattered, and he’s not even going to get much rest this weekend which my nephew’s baptism. We’re driving up oon Sunday morning for the service and then staying over for another party on the Monday afternoon. He’s only going to have Saturday as any downtime. He has agreed to me ordering in the shopping this week, it’ll be one less thing he needs to do on Saturday. It does mean I can have a very nice browse through the Ocado (more expensive, but better quality than the others – plus I have a discount voucher) website though! Mr H was too tired to think about the campsite last night hopefully tonight otherwise it’ll be Friday as one or other of us will be at church tomorrow evening for the Ascension day service. Having been out all day I now have to catch up on the housework…fun! So I’m off, will try and stop by some blogs later. Bye!

 

New day…new outlook

Hello!

I pulled myself together after writing all that yesterday. Sometimes I just need an outlet to vent and that’s what this blog is for me, I don’t keep a diary/journal other than this and I really didn’t want to take all my frustration out on Mr H when he got home.

I’m having another go at following the Slimming World ideas at home. I’ve printed out a food diary which is stuck to the fridge, so far (ok, so it’s just over 24 hours) I’ve filled it all in and I’m keep on track. Mr H has agreed to help me as much as he can. He’s accepted that if he’s late home from work I may have eaten and he’ll have to fend for himself and he’s agreed that spending more money on the food shopping is ok if it’s going to help us eat more healthily.

I’m glad he’s not the only one who leaves things around for someone else to clear up, thanks Chrisb, that did help me feel a bit better. Mr H does claim he usually does it and forgets occasionally…but I’d say it was the other way around! The house is still better than it has been, and I can get it how I want it just a little bit at a time.

I’ve had another campsite suggestion sent to me via Twitter (thanks zooarchaeologist!), I love the look of it and will be talking to Mr H about it tonight. Who knows, we may actually manage to book something by this weekend! (I’ll have jinxed it now by saying that….)

Well, I’m going to go and have a little bit of down time before cooking the munchkin’s dinner. Bye!

 

Aaaargh!

Stop reading here unless you can face a huge whinge/moan…..

I weighed myself this morning…I weigh more now than I did at the start of the year. Back in February I said that I wanted to lose weight for my nephew’s baptism….well that’s on Sunday…and I haven’t. So unless I wear a very padded bra my tummy is going to look big. I just don’t know what to do now to keep myself motivated and focussed. Every time I feel tired/low /bored/(insert any other emotion here) I find myself reaching for cake/chocolate/anything full of calories. Over on Suburban Mum’s blog there has been a suggestion in the comments of a group of bloggers starting a weight loss blog. I love the idea, any accountability/support has to be good at the moment.

My tendonitis has also had another flare up at the moment. Out of the past 6 weeks more than 2 have been spent with my wrist strapped up and pain when I type/do housework/push the buggy… It’s not really helping my mood, or my weight since the munchkin is still too small to walk far (and too slow to help any weight loss) and I can’t do any of the exercises at the fitness class which involve putting weight through my wrist.

The house is looking more and more like a tip. Mr H is not really helping either. Every morning before work he makes his lunch then leaves me all the rubbish (ham packets, pepper/tomato cores/ grape stems/crumbs etc) to clear up, he always leaves his glass/mug in the bedroom from the night before and he never puts any of his paperwork/post away. I know it sounds pathetic, but I’ve been working really hard to try and get the house under control and he’s just not helping. Even though he says he loves having the surfaces clear in the kitchen and having space on the dining table he’s just doesn’t seem willing to help keep them clear.

We still haven’t got much further with the campsite hunting. Suburban Mum’s suggestion looks really good, but sadly it’s a bit too far. We can’t switch our church commitments so we won’t be able to leave until lunchtime. Anglesey is a good 5 hours from here on a good run, and that’s without counting toilet stops for the munchkin. Grrr… back to the drawing board. We’ll come up with somewhere, at least we’re not going in school holidays so there shouldn’t be too much difficulty booking a site as long as we do it fairly soon.

Well, thanks to my stupid wrist it’s taken me 2 hours on and off to get this typed so I’m going to give up my whinge there. Hopefully I’ll be back tomorrow in a better mood….

 

New car!

Mr H was browsing the local paper on Saturday morning when he saw a car listed for sale he liked the look of. He decided we’d go and have a look (it had been traded in at one of the local big dealerships).

We had a good look at it and gave it a test drive and then decided to try and barter the price down (Mr H being a typical tight-fisted Yorkshire man didn’t want to pay the full price!). They didn’t give as much for our car as he’d hoped for the trade in (but it was what I expected) and weren’t willing to drop the price at all (though they threw in a year’s warranty and 6 months tax). We ended up going out for lunch and having a big discussion as to whether it was worth the money and whether we could afford it.

We decided to go for it! We’ve just managed to pay for it out of our savings (plus £1000 on a credit card which will be paid off with 2/3  months). It does blow absolutely all our savings for now but we won’t have a finance deal hanging over us.

As of next Saturday (when we collect it after the service) we will be the proud owners of a Toyota Yaris Verso! (though a slightly newer model than shown there – 54 reg) It’s the horrible ‘gold’ (read sicky, metallic, yellow-green) colour but apart from that it’s pretty much exactly what we wanted as a replacement to our Ford Mondeo. It’s more efficient than the Mondeo and will be a lot cheaper to insure. It’s got masses of space inside, plus the back seats fold into the floor if we ever need to load it with a lot of things. It’ll be perfect for going camping with and we should be able to fit our bikes inside it as well without taking them apart too much.

The Verso is also something that I’d be willing to drive. The seats are a bit higher up and the car itself is a fair bit smaller than the Mondeo. The thing to do now is apply for a new provisional license and save up for driving lessons…at about £27 a go around here it may take some time for us to be able to afford for me to take many lessons. I still don’t really like the idea of driving but it would help us a lot if I could.

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In other news we finally have a munchkin who will say thank you (or rather ‘danks’) when we ask her to. Even though we often have to ask her a coupe of times it’s better than nothing. Potty training is still going well. We’ve had one wet accident in the past week (on the sofa!) but we’ve not seen a #2 for 3 days now…

The kitchen is still looking fairly good. It was left a little messy over the weekend but it won’t take very long at all to get it tidy and clean again. This week’s mission is to get the dining room in the same condition (i.e. clean, tidy, clutter away).

The diet isn’t going too badly. No loss this week, but no gain either. I definitely deserved to see a gain this morning, I ate so much junk over the weekend thanks to it being a certain time of the month and being out car shopping on Saturday. Back to trying ot be good this week. I’m tracking everything on Tesco’s healthy living tracker (which is free as well!) and am trying to be honest on there so let’s see if that helps.

 

So that’s why… (warning, here, there, everywhere post)

Well, I was given a reason for the lethargy yesterday, and not the reason I was really hoping. Yes, it’s that time of the month. There was a chance that I was pregnant (and by our past history a very high chance) and Mr H and I both thought I was. Instead my body decided to through us off the scent completely and give me the period from hell a day early!

I spent the time after church yesterday intermittently crying (I’m so desperate for another baby even though I know the timing is rubbish) and curled up in a ball with cramps. Not my idea of a fun way to spend a Sunday.

Thanks to generally feeling rough I’ve eaten rather a lot of junk over the last few days. I did intend to weigh in this morning but forgot, so hopefully I’ll remember tomorrow, though I suspect that I won’t have lost an ounce, rather that I’ll have put on. I’m going to have to focus on getting back on track, though maybe not until the backache etc have eased!

The munchkin slept for 3 hours as soon as we got back from church (given that she didn’t go to sleep until 11pm on Saturday that was much needed) which gave me a little rest. We did try and start potty training a little when she got up, however in the 3 1/2 hours before we put her to bed we had one accident and the grand total of zero successes!

So far this morning we’ve been up and nappy free for 2 hours and we’ve had no wees anywhere! I suspect that she may be waiting until I’m not ready or have just popped to the bathroom/kitchen…

Anyway, on those lines I’m going to go and play with the munchkin a bit more in the hopes that I can get her on the potty in time! Apologies for the very random nature of this post, I keep leaping up to put someone on the potty!

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ps. Within a minute of me writing the comment below the munchkin had a huge wet accident in the middle of the living room floor! ooppss!

 

Monday weigh in

Not a bad start, a 1 1/2 lb loss this week.

I’ve been reasonably good with what I’m eating this week, less snacking mainly. I’m still struggling to drink enough but I’m making that my mission this week. Itr’s not unusual for me just to have 2 cups of tea and 1 or sometimes 2 glasses of squash! What I have found to help that in the past was to make up a big jug of sugar free squash in the morning and leave it on the breakfast bar so I can refill my glass very easily. I’m going to give that another try, and see if it helps again.

I bought some nice smoked salmon and frozen prawns at the weekend so I’m going to be having lots of yummy fish salads for lunches/dinners this week and I also bought some tasty looking salad potatoes to have either with salads or with the gammon steaks that Mr H saw and decided to have for a change.

Hopefully the combination of nice fresh food and more liquid will help me have another weight loss next week. There’s 8 weeks now until my nephew’s christening (I was told off by my sister on the phone for calling it his baptism!) and even at a lb a week that’s still over 1/2 a stone lost….I can do it!

 

Ouch!

That’s my word for the morning!

It started with the munchkin dropping her head onto my nose while in bed this morning, she was playing there while Mr H was showering. Definitely an ouch! There was even a crunch sound! We then spent the next 20 minutes trying to get the munchkin to say something resembling sorry (for hurting Mummy). How did you teach your child/children to say sorry? We’re really not getting anywhere with that one. We just tend to get lots of tears instead. We eventually heard the so sound and gave up at that tihis morning. The frustrating thing is that we know she can say the word sorry as we’ve heard it as she’s been chattering away to herself when she’s been playing.

Another ouch this morning was when I weighed myself…my heaviest this year! Thankfully no heavier than I was when on Slimming World properly last year but still 6 lbs (!!!) heavier than when I last weighed myself! I’ve created myself a food diary sheet to pin on the fridge, I just hope now that I can stick to it and remember to write down exactly what I eat when (no cheating…). I wonder how long I can do that for….my guess is not very long, I’ve printed out sheets for 4 weeks and I really don’t want to miss out too many days on that (no more than one a week is my challenge).

The third (and hopefully final) ouch of the morning is my wrist. For some reason my tensonitis has had a big flare up this morning, I couldn’t lift the kettle to make myself and Mr H a cup of tea earlier. I suspect it partly due to using the touch pad on the laptop. Mr H has dug out a wireless mouse for me to use, hopefully that’ll help, ibuprofen has done nothing to it this morning.

 

Good intentions…

…never seem to last long in the H house!

After all I wrote yesterday about getting myself back in the diet routine and trying to be good I completely blew it in the afternoon.

I took the munchkin out to storytime where she (and her little friend) caused chaos. They wouldn’t sit or stand still and listen or join in with the sonns, just wanted to run around. The munchkin was even defiant! That’s really not like her most of the time. She was so close to being brought home after just 10 minutes!

She did eventually calm down (after I held her on my lap for a while) but back at home she had a very short nap and then wouldn’t do anything except grizzle in my arms. I thought she was maybe feeling off colour but she didn’t have a temperature and I couldn’t find any sign of anything being wrong.

It’s quite draining when the munchkin’s like this and my automatic reaction is to reach for the food. I suppose a good point that came of it is that I have very little chocolate left in the house! (no, I didn’t eat that much, there wasn’t a huge amount anyway)

I may have to fight myself not to buy more chocolate when I go out later on (I need stamps for the monthering sunday cards), for some reason I didn’t get to sleep until after 1:30 this morning! I’m more than a little tired today, and this evening I’m going out for dinner with my mummy friends, though I’m not being picked up until after 8 so it’s going to be a late one. Hmmm…. fitness class tomorrow could be fun!

Oh well, each day is a fresh start (or something like it!) and I’ve done ok so far….!

 

Mixed up Monday

A mixed up post with a few little bits! 

Mr H and I had a slightly overdue discussion about trying for another baby yesterday. Much as I don’t want it to be, the only sensible option is to wait until we know what’s happening with Mr H’s job come November, whether he’s staying in the new group or whether they’re all being made redundant. This means that trying for baby #2 has had to be postponed, probably, until next year.

Due to the above I’m really going to try and stick to the diet (I know, I’ve said that before). I used to say to myself that we’ll be trying for a baby before too long, there’s not point being too strict now, I’ll wait. Well since I’ve now got a year or more I’m going to try and get myself down to a healthy BMI, or ideally the middle of the healthy BMI. I’m going to try and remember to weigh myself every Monday morning and update my weightloss page accordingly, though I’ve not had a good start to that – I forgot this morning! I’ve not been too good lately so I suspect I’ll go up rather than down when I next weigh myself but at least I’ll know where I stand. My nephew, J, is being baptised on 4 May so that’s my first aim, be able to wear something nice and not look pregnant (I did on some of my sister’s wedding photos).

The Mums and tots fitness class I’ve been going to has been given another 8 weeks of funding to continue after Easter so hopefully that’ll help the weightloss as well. Last week was great, though I didn’t half ache on Thursday. We were doing circuit training with 14 different 2 minute stations. This week is all exercise based around gym balls…I bought one of those to sit on when pregnant with the munchkin, I might get it out and have a try and using it for the exercises… I know that doing regular exercise will help me lose weight and get fitter, I’ve just got to get off my backside and do it!

I’ve been browsing the internet this morning trying to find somewhere that’s not going to rip me off completely. I’m looking for (very) reasonably priced flowers to send to my grans for Mothering Sunday…. Most of the cheaper ones I can find are rather pathetic looking bunches of carnations (I hate having such a budget but we didn’t manage to get the remortgage organised before a couple of payments at the high variable rate). Does anyone have any recommendations of sites that might be worth a look? If I lived nearer I’d go and see them at some point over the next couple of weeks and take something then, but as it is I have no idea when I’ll see them next (probably baby J’s baptism).

 And a follow up to some comments from my photos post:

Littlemissbliss – while Mr H is my toyboy (by 7 months) he’s not that young! He’s 26, though he was only 21 when we married.

Beccy – here you are: 

Chocolate brownies (pinched from V, though I don’t know where she got it from)

 100g Butter/marg, melted
1 cup Sugar
1tsp Vanilla Essence
2 eggs
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup cocoa
1/4 tsp baking powder(only if you’re using plain flour)
1/2 cup choc chunks (or more!)

Blend butter, sugar and vanilla together. Then add eggs, cocoa, flour, baking powder, salt and chocolate.

Pour into a greased (or lined) baking tin (suggested 9×6 inches)
Bake at 180 C fo 20-25 mins

I baked mine in a 7×7 tin and ended up with rather crunchy edges as the middle wasn’t cooking, but they’ve softened with time (not that I gave them much!) and were nice and chewy by the next day.

Well that’s it for my mixed up Monday! Hope you’ve all had a good start to your weeks. Take care!