No Pain, No Gain

I’m really trying hard to lose some weight and get in shape. At the moment I’m kind of stuck on a plateau, and with Thanksgiving on Thursday, I’ll be happy to just stay on that plateau. That’s why I was exercising this afternoon. And I think I hurt myself. What kind of exercising was I doing? I was taking my daughter for a walk. Now, to my credit, I wasn’t just pushing her in the stroller. That’s too easy. Instead, I had my 23 pound baby strapped on my back, while I walked to miles in what ended up feeling like a blizzard. Yes, it was pretty cold today, but we were pretty well bundled up. I had on a t-shirt, sweatshirt, leggings, sweat pants and ski jacket. Alison had on a long sleeved shirt, denim overalls, heavy winter coat, snowpants, boots, mittens, hat and hood. Most of her trunk was also surrounded by her backpack, so that some added protection from the wind. It wasn’t snowing when we started off, well, maybe there were a few flakes here and there, but nothing I was too worried about. Something in me said I should put the rain/sun shade on Alison’s backpack, though, just in case. You never know what might happen. We went for a walk one time in the summer and ended up in the pouring rain despite there not being a cloud in the sky other than the one over our block. To bad that little something didn't tell me to take an umbrella, too, but off we went. We should have just stayed home. By the time we got to the corner, the snow was coming down a little more, and the wind was picking up a bit. By the time we were at the half way point, I could hardly look up when we were walking into the wind without having my eyeballs pelted with snow flakes. I normally walk at a pretty decent pace. I can do a little over 2 miles in about 45 minutes, which might seem slow, but I do have to stop at about 5 intersections and have to stop to pick up dog poop at least once (sometimes twice). Today, with the weather getting worse and worse, I kicked it up a notch, knocked about 1/4 of a mile off my regular route and got home in just over half an hour (intersections and poop pick-up included). In the process, I think I really pulled something in my leg. But, I walked off a pound, so it must have been worth it, right? At least Alison enjoyed herself.

"C" Is For Cookie

Although I doubt it has been done so intently as it is now, with Tickle Me Elmo, Hokey Pokey Elmo, Limbo Elmo and the like, Sesame Street has merchandised itself pretty much from the beginning. As a child, I was the proud owner of three Sesame Street record albums (big vinyl discs, with two sides, played on a turntable where a needle skimmed over the grooves, for those too young to have ever owned one). I loved those records and they were well played. I can’t say for certain, but I think “Bert & Ernie’s Sing-A-Long” was probably my favorite.

Three years ago, I went looking for these records in my dad’s record collection. They were all still there! I brought them home and we played them in preparation for making them into CDs to play while we were babysitting my nephew. They are scritchy and scratchy and “Bert & Ernie” and “Big Bird Sings” have a couple of songs that have skips in them, but for records that are almost 30 years old and, as I said, very well played, they were in remarkably good shape. “Bert & Ernie” got put on CD then and the other two, plus a mint copy of “Bert’s Blockbusters” that I bought on eBay, were put on CD last year, after Alison came along. We have played them a lot in the last year or so, mostly when we’re in the car. I never realized, until Friday, that Alison is beginning to recognize the songs. We were watching Sesame Street on Noggin when all of the sudden, there is Cookie Monster starting to sing “C Is for Cookie.” Hooray! Now I’ll be able to hear the words that the record skips over and I have long ago forgotten! Alison is totally entranced. And then.....the cable goes goofy and we lose the station. I was disappointed and Alison was down right mad. She wanted to hear that song, and there was nothing I could do to get the station back. Whatever the problem was, it only lasted a couple of minutes, but that was long enough for Cookie to be gone when the show came back on. Fortunately a 15 month old has a short attention span, so she was just glad the show was back on. I guess we’ll have to be content with our scratchy, skippy CD until the next time we see Cookie Monster singing his song on TV.

TGIF

My daughter is driving me crazy today!!! I know that she is not feeling quite up to snuff because she has got at least one, enourmous, molar coming in. Her poor little gum is all red and swollen. I can see the outside “prongs” just below the surface.

Today she threw the mother of all temper tantrums at lunch. She came the closest she’s ever come to not getting any lunch and, instead, just getting put to bed. My child, who is perfectly capable of feeding herself, and has been doing so for months, will put one bite, maybe two, in her mouth on her own, even if it’s something she likes, and then just sit there and poke at the rest of her food. Most parents would say, “Ok, I guess you’re just not hungry today,” and leave it at that. Unfortunately, because of dietary requirements (must have 6 grams of fiber per day in order to maintain good bowel function), we can’t do that. So we let her sit in her high chair, with a pile of diced peaches on the tray in front of her, and scream her head off until we were done eating. Then we started shoveling the peaches in, which she was perfectly willing to eat, as long as someone was feeding them to her. After that, on to the peas. By that time she was so tired, she was practically falling asleep while she was chewing. I guess that’s what you get when you wake up an hour early in the morning and then scream your head off for 20 minutes. At least she should take a good nap this afternoon. Unfortunately, we’ll go through the same thing at supper.

I hope this tooth comes in soon. I’m tired of fighting over meals again. I’m tired of being frustrated all the time. I guess I’m just tired, period.

Shopping For Alison

Last night Alison and I were out looking for a winter coat and snowpants, which has not been that easy to find. There are lots of snowsuits, but not a lot of two piece sets in the size we need. I saw one I really liked at Walmart, early last month, and of course, now, when I'm ready to buy it, they have almost no winter coats at all, let alone the coat and snowpants I had wanted to buy. Anyway, during our shopping trip, I came across the most beautiful little dress coats. They were all wool with faux fur around the cuffs and hood. They had them in red, pink, and navy blue. I've really been wanting to get Alison a dress coat (after all, what fun is it to have a little girl if you can’t buy her all that girly stuff), and the red coat was just what I had in mind. And then I saw the price tag.....$118. That’s right, one hundred and eighteen dollars. And then I saw the sale sign....40% off. Oh, I wanted that coat so badly. They even had one in Alison’s size. I stood there for a good five minutes talking to Alison about the coat and even held it up in front of her to see what it would look like. She would be adorable in it. In the end, though, I put it back. Even though I know that my own dress coat was somewhere in the $200 range (don’t know the exact price....it was a Christmas gift from my parents), I just couldn’t justify spending $75 dollars on a coat for a 15 month old that she would only wear to church for one winter. But I love that coat!

The Best Laid Plans....

I like to knit. Over the past few years I’ve made quite a few things for other people’s kids. Now that I have one of my own, I llike to try and make things for her. Unfortunately it doesn’t always work out too well. Now that Indian Summer seems to have gone and it’s getting cold, I decided to make Alison a pair of mittens, rather than buy her some. I ran around trying to find yarn that would match her coat, which is navy blue on one side and cerise on the other (it’s reversible). I finally found navy blue yarn that I could live with, only to come home and find cerise (which is really the color that I wanted to use) in the stash of hand-me-down yarn I have in my craft closet. Mittens are small so they don’t take too long to make, but I still spent almost 2 hours yesterday doing the actual knitting and then another hour stitching them together, and ended up missing taking Alison for a walk, which was the reason I was making the mittens in the first place, only to find out that I had made them too small. So I started again. I made the next larger size and got them all put together and they are the right size. The only trouble is that it takes forever to get Alison’s hands in them because the thumb hole that is big enough for me to get my thumb in is not big enough to get her thumb in! But I got them on her and we took off for a walk this afternoon. I’m glad she had her mittens because it was pretty cold, but we had a good time anyway. Tomorrow I’m going to start on a hat. I wonder how many times I’ll end up making it before I get one that fits?