October 22, 2011

2 Year Old!...


Ryan Addison
October 21, 2009  9:49 am
9 pounds 9 ounces  21 inches


                                              Here she was...and here she is.  Two years later



How about a few more then and nows


Mommy and Ryan 
then...


and now.


(please excuse the mouth full of candy, it is her birthday)


Ryan with mommy and daddy
then...


and now.




Big Brother AJ and his new baby sister
then...


and now.



We decided to forego a party this year.  There has been a lot going on and I think we all appreciated a quiet evening of a halfway healthy dinner, birthday cake (aka sugar), new toys and staying up past normal bedtimes.  Ryan's birthday fell on Friday so I didn't feel guilty about letting them stay up, especially since Momah and Daddy got home late and we couldn't start the festivities without them!  

We killed a little time taking mommy/baby pics and making silly faces.  AJ was practicing his spiderman web shooting skills. 



Daddy and Momah got home and ate dinner.  Momah even brought goodie bags for the party kids.  :) 


Mommy took her pic that everyone makes fun of her for, the neatly arranged, pre-opening, gift pic.


And when no one was looking Ryan dove right in.  So daddy had to wait to finish his dinner while the kids opened everything.  And by 'kids' I mean mommy and by 'everything' I mean I opened the stuff she was ignoring and showed it to her.  She did enjoy ripping the paper though, what kid doesn't...?


Then of course, CAKE!  I cheated a little bit this year and didn't go all out with my crazy, handmade, sculpted creations.  Do you think it will scar her for life...yeah me neither.  Not when I made these sugar laden works of art.  She's two and they like crap they aren't supposed to eat and what other time of the year can you put candy corn pumpkins and marshmallow ghosts on a birthday cake?  Never.




She is sneaking candy corns off of the cake while we are singing to her.  After this pic she stole a pumpkin off of the number '2'.


This was her special cupcake since it had two ghosts on it.
She liked it.


They were feeding Ryan's new baby


After cake, the festivities continued with more picture taking, playing house, wrestling and a drink.  Yes, just one.  Not a few, not even a whole round, just one drink sipped by one person.  We are party animals!


something got in the way of the flash but otherwise a cute pic


Momah and AJ playing 'alligators and fighting'  AJ's own creation


Jared and Jasey (with the drink!) chatting in the kitchen


in her new jammies, playing mommy


I see you


I wasn't sure how much she would like the babies and stuff, but she loves them!
(and she finally has toys of her own!)

It was a wonderful day.  I still can't believe that my little baby girl is two.  I know such a typical mommy thing to say right?  But it's true.  When AJ was this age I couldn't even imagine when he turned 5 and now that's right around the corner (oh crap).  I know in no time Ryan will be the one that will be starting Kindergarten in less than a year and amazing me even more than she does now with the things that she is learning.  At the doctor for her 2 year visit they were asking all the normal developmental questions.  Two of them were "does she have a vocabulary of at least 20 to 50 words?" and "does she string two word sentences together?"  I almost laughed.  This girl learns 20 new words a day, she has a vocab of 10 to 20 words in two different languages (sign and chinese) and she strings 5 to 8 word sentences together, sometimes more!  I'm not trying to say hey look at my little girl she is so smart.  I understand that those are the standards, kids excel at different things and develope at different rates.  There are definitely areas that I know she is just average at the moment, even if I only compare her to AJ.  But she is a talker and those were two questions that she had no trouble passing with flying colors.  So two years later...

Ryan Addison
October 21, 2011
27 pounds 5 ounces
34.5 inches

And so you don't forget the cuteness that is Ryan, I leave you with this...


and this...


and this...


 cheeeeeeese!

Happy Birthday Pretty!  We love you!







 Today I am thankful for having two great kids that listen (most of the time), play nicely together (most of the time), and love each other (all the time!)  I am thankful that they are happy and healthy and know that we love them more than anything.


October 08, 2011

50...

Ok, so, of course I really wanted to write this post because it is super awesome, I feel great and I am very proud of myself.  (It goes without saying that I am also very proud of mom and Jasey but I don't see it as my privilege to write about their accomplishments)  To write this post I knew that I had to show who I was only a few short months ago.  How can you do justice to yourself if you aren't willing to share everything?  I wasn't sure which I would have more of a personal issue with, telling the numbers or posting the picture.  Oddly enough I think it's posting the picture, even though anyone could have seen me any old time while I was as big as I was, to post it now is a bit embarrassing to me.  Not that I am completely ok with writing down my numbers either but, gotta share it all, right?  I have no problem saying "I've lost 50 pounds" but to actually see it, ugh, totally different.  Oh well, even if I don't have to share, I'm going to anyway.

I'm gonna go a little 'Joy Fit Club' for a minute.  I of course knew I was getting a lot bigger then I used to be but I had been able to kind of brush it off.  I was getting older and didn't dance anymore, I'd just had a baby.  Then about 4 months after Ryan was born I was still thinking well I just had another baby, I have time, then I saw a video of myself.  Well at first I didn't know it was me, it wasn't until I recognized my shirt that I realized that I was looking at myself.  That was a horrid feeling, and you would think that something like that would really whip me into shape, well it kinda did.  I of course convinced myself it was still early, I still had a lot of pain and swelling from my c-section.  Which was all true, but not to the point that I gave myself credit for.  I started walking and could tell I was losing some weight but I wasn't really concerned about it and have no clue what I weighed at that point.  I thought for sure that I would do something soon, then a whole freaking year went by.

You know that thing where if you ask someone to draw a picture of themselves most everyone will draw themselves at least 10 pounds heavier then they really are?  It's how they see themselves.  Yeah, I was the complete opposite, it's like I was in denial, I still had a vision in my head of the young dancing, cheerleading Andrea.  Every picture of the late 20's and 30 year old, post babies Andrea shocked the crap out of me.  Although all the pictures had me knowing I had to do something I kept telling myself oh it's not too bad I could be this or that, it could always be worse.  One of those things was the number on the scale.  I am a 'oh it's just a number' person, so I figured as long as my number still had a '1' in front of it I was ok and it wouldn't be hard to bring the two numbers that followed it down.  Then within about a 6 week time period my number continued to climb and next thing I knew...

I weighed 216 pounds and had to go buy myself a pair of size 18 pants, every shirt I owned had an XL on the tag and some of those were still a little uncomfortable.  It's hard to find pictures of myself even now, because I'm always the one taking them but here you go (it took a lot to put this up and I'm still doubting my decision)


I couldn't believe it 216 pounds!  I couldn't pretend anymore, not when Ryan was 18 months old, I was far from being considered postpartum.  The first thing I changed was simple I stopped snacking out of boredom and instead had a glass of water.  I drank a lot of water anyway but a little more isn't going to hurt you.  Even though I was eating pretty healthy snacks, it was still extra food that I didn't need.  Just with that small change in about a months time I had lost almost 10 pounds.  Then mom, Jasey and I as a trio decided to make a change, so we all started out on our endeavor together.  We compared numbers almost every morning, congratulating and encouraging each other.  Six months later we are all healthier, happier and much smaller.  This is the most recent picture I could find of myself and it's from over a month ago.


And because I like this picture so much, here it is again  :)


When these pictures were taken I had lost around 40 pounds and I am down another 10 pounds since then.

So my latest count (so you don't have to do that math) I weigh 166 pounds, I am now buying size 10 pants and am making a collection of shirts with an 'M' on the tag.

I have thought about a tummy tuck many times since I still have some unpleasant stuff from the c-sections and I believe I would be down another pants size maybe even 2 if I did get one.  But it's money, another surgery and a big risk so I'm still up in the air about it.  I am much smaller than I was before I got pregnant with either of the kids and I am also (and I think this is super cool)  20 pounds under what I was when Jasey and I got married!

For the record mom has lost 30 pounds and Jasey has lost 60 pounds.  Together we have lost a total of 140 pounds, an entire person!  They both look great and I am so proud of them!

I didn't start out with any goals and I still don't have any.  I wouldn't mind losing some more but if I stay where I am for a little while I am very happy with that.  It would be nice to give my clothing a little chance to wear in a bit before I have to go buy more, again.

So there you have it the old me and new me and the brave me behind the scenes still not sure if I should kick myself for posting that picture.  If I get a better more recent picture of myself I'll be sure to share it with you.




 - Today I am thankful for the lovely weather we have been having the past few days, the windows and doors are open and the A/Cs have been off!  Also for the rain we are supposed to get because I know the garden would really enjoy it!  -