The weight is on

Every time I hop on my bike, I'm reminded that I need to lose a couple of pounds. Yes, I do need to lose them to satisfy my vanity, but there's more to it when considering the MS150. If I'm going to ride well, I need to be in better shape.

Up until today, I was kind of hoping that all the riding I'll be doing once I get my new bike (which is still MIA. boo hoo!) will take care of any extra baggage I need to get rid of, but truth be told, after looking a bit closer at my current lifestyle, I'd say I could ride 100 miles every day and never lose an ounce.

Seriously.

What I really need to do is way more cardio and improve my upper body strength. Oh, and eating better would really help, too.

It's a well-known fact that Sophia is thin. She always has been. It's not like when she was a baby she was huge and now she's thin, she's just always been thin. At one year, she weighed 18 pounds, at 18 months she was 21.5 pounds and now, at 2, I'm really, really hoping she weighs at least 23 pounds.

But the girl is tall. Boy, is she tall. For her entire life, she has been above the 95 percentile in height (but at about the 10 percentile for weight). My guess for her next appointment is that she's at least 36 inches tall. My theory is that every time she puts on a little weight she grows an inch. And as a mother of a very thin toddler, I feel terrible about it. People are always commenting on how tiny she is. No one takes into consideration how tall she is when discussing her weight. I feed her, honest, I do. She eats all the time. She may not like to sit and eat dinner with us, but she does eat. Plus the child never ever stops running.

So far, the doctors haven't said too much about her weight since it's been her norm, but every time she sits on that scale I pray for weight gain. It may be a matter of survival, Ryan is 20 pounds (and 31 inches tall!) at 10 months old. The boy is a monster compared to her. He shouldn't weigh more than his big sister before he's even a year old. She's going to have to learn some serious fighting moves to keep him from crushing her.

So, in preparation for her upcoming check up, I've been stuffing her with all sorts of yummy foods she won't turn away. Peanut butter, bread, chocolate, bacon, sausage, eggs, pork and cheese, lots of cheese.

All of this means that we've been keeping the house stocked with junk food. Now that we've started this high-impact eating regimen with her, I'm certainly not going to be able to stop after Thursday's appointment, right? That would be cruel.

This is no way for me to make a lifestyle change. We'll find out on Thursday if all my efforts to get her to gain weight have paid off. In the mean time, I have to figure out how to fatten her up without doing the same to myself.

Anyone know a personal trainer/chef that will come to my house and help get me in shape? For free.

***
After reading this post, my mom sent me the following e-mail:

Subject: You at 2
34 inches tall
22lb 8oz
Runs in the family!!
People used to think we didn’t feed you. At least Sophia will EAT. You wouldn’t!
Love, Mom

I also learned, thanks to a reminder call from the pediatrician, that her appointment is actually on Wednesday. That doesn't leave me any time to fatten her up!

You can read the update from her doctor's appointment by clicking here.

For anyone who might have missed my new badge on the right-hand sidebar, I have recently been added to Alltop. I am now listed with some other great bloggers, so if you have a couple minutes, check it out.

Clothing makes the woman

I think I’m having an identity crisis. In fact, I’m sure of it. The weather is getting warmer and Ryan is taking a nap, so I thought this would be a good time to pull out that old, dusty box of summer clothes that’s been hiding on the top shelf of my closet for two years. Yes, it’s sad, I know, this is the first summer in two whole years that I will not be wearing maternity clothes, and I was so excited about it until I opened that box. Inside I found T-shirts, shorts and super cute tanks. There must be an outfit for every glorious summer day.

Mustering up every ounce of courage I could, I tried on a pair of shorts. They don’t fit. Not even close. Looking at the size, I was hit with the cold realization that although I have lost most of the weight I gained during pregnancies (yes, that’s plural), I have not lost all of it and it means that pesky 15 pounds will prevent me from fitting into a single article of clothing from that box.

Saddened by this discovery, I sift through the clothes like a box of old photos, remembering the days when I could fit my skinny little butt into a size 4 with little effort. Depressing as it might be, memories of wearing these clothes and taking the time to examine them made me realize that maybe it’s a good thing I don’t fit into them. Some of the clothes I wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) wear today.

That's Miss Surly Wench to you. HA! I think the cat likes it.

This leaves me with the daunting task of having to buy myself an entire summer wardrobe. On the surface, I’m kind of excited about it. Being a little bit of a shopoholic, this is a great opportunity. I have to wear clothes, you know, which means I have to buy some that fit. But what do I get? Am I the same person I was two years ago? Has my style changed? Am I ready to adopt a more mature wardrobe? I think I know the answers to those questions, but I sometimes miss the old me. Plus, I really love this shirt and I’m dying to fit into it again, even to just wear it on weekends.

Don't laugh. Lucky 13, I love this shirt!

Since having my kids, clothes have become very important to me. My body has changed dramatically and it needs to be dressed properly. This may sound superficial and selfish, but it’s important to me. If I look good, or at least I think I look good, I feel good. When I’m feeling fat or depressed about how much I’ve changed physically and mentally, if I can look in the mirror and be reassured that I don’t look as bad as I my mind says I do, then I can get through the day with a general state of contentment. Properly fitted clothes do that for me.

I’m a little scared of the dressing room, so send good thoughts my way, I need them.

What a way to end the day

Every night we go through the same routine. It’s a terrible routine and I wish we could stop it, but we just don’t know how. It starts out when we put dinner on the table, that’s when Sophia starts. Pretty much right after she gets in her booster seat, she starts yelling. “Done. Done,” she says as she’s standing up on her chair. Things just escalate from there. The yelling turns to screaming, all the while, Ryan is quietly eating.

Dinner has become a two parent job, one to take care of the “Sophia situation” and the other to feed the baby. Neither Jon nor I actually get to eat anything and we don’t have any idea how to stop it because we would really like to have a nice family dinner.

We’ve tried putting her in Time Out to calm her down (she calms down until we put her back at the table). We’ve tried to let her eat whatever she wants (her dinner becomes a huge buffet of things that never make it in her mouth). We’ve tried just letting her not eat (but how long can a mother not feed her baby? Not long). We’ve tried yelling at her, negotiating with her and pleading with her. We’ve even tried taking her out of the booster seat and letting her sit in a “big girl chair.” Nothing seems to work. She just will not eat at the table. That is until after dinner when, in a desperate attempt to put some kind of food in her little belly, we give her something that she can eat in the living room.

Now this doesn’t happen every single night. We probably have one, maybe two nights a week when she will quietly sit and eat whatever’s in front of her. But those days are few and hard to come by.

I know toddlers are picky, but I’m really concerned that she almost never eats dinner (or breakfast or any meal that we try to put her at the table to eat) and that she’s throwing an almost daily temper tantrum that we, clearly, cannot control. I also know that we are, somehow, creating the situation, but I'm not sure what it is we're doing or what to do to stop creating it. I’m worried that we are creating a family doomed to be on “Supernanny.”

Let her eat cake

Childhood obesity has become and epidemic in this country. On almost any given day, you can pick up the newspaper and read about how America's children are expanding at completely unheard of proportions. Schools are changing snack and party policies. Spongebob Square Pants has become a spokes-sponge for baby carrots and Sesame Street characters are plastered all over organic food choices. For all of these reason, Sophia's recent 18 month checkup seemed a little, well, ironic.

She is tall and skinny. There is no question about that. From the day she was born, she has been at the 97 percentile or higher for her height and at the 10 percentile for her weight. Today, she weighs a whopping 21 pounds and is almost 34 inches tall. I imagine she eats just like most toddlers, some days she eats like a horse, other days she survives on air and apple juice.

While talking to the doctor about her weight, I mention that I'm a little concerned that she is so tiny. He says, "Don't worry. She not malnutritioned, she's just petite for her weight and very tall for her age, which she has always been. But if you want to give her ice cream every now and then, you can. You can put butter on her toast if you want and, of course, you can give her Pediasure every day if you want to give her the extra calories. Don't worry about making sure she eats her vegetables, just give her the calories."

It's not everyday the doctor tells you that it's OK to eat ice cream and butter and not to worry about eating your vegetables. It's especially ironic since my husband and I had just launched an all out war to get her to eat some vegetables. Our latest battle ended with her taking one bite of dinner followed by one fruit snack. One for one. It may not have been the best parenting tactic, but she ate some vegetables, so I considered it a victory.

For the record, Sophia has been known to eat only ice cream for dinner, we never short-change her on butter for her toast and she drinks whole milk. I will also continue trying to get her to eat her vegetables.