myJaxonIf we don’t go crazy once in a while, we’ll all go crazy. - Hawkeye

I have to make some decisions. I really can’t put them off any longer. One of them is something I’ve been attempting to do for years with no real success and that needs to change. The other was going to happen eventually, it’s just occurring sooner than I had planned. Regardless of how these came about, I need to stick by the decisions I’m going to make and that’s going to be really hard.

I need to lose weight. It’s not an option any more. I’m tired of being big and clunky. I’m ready to go shopping and be able to put something on and not think “not in this lifetime”. I’ve made some half-assed attempts in the past, but I really need to do it this time. I want to be where I was going into college. That means I have to lose close to 50lbs and that is not going to be easy. I’ve wanted to try Weight Watchers, and if it was cheaper or we had the money, I would be signing up tonight. Unfortunately, that isn’t an option right now, but I’m hoping to try it sometime this fall. For now, I’ll start with the basics. No more pasta. No more pop. No more sweets (except ice cream). It’s going to be hard. Especially the pasta. It’s an easy and easy meal and we always have it in the apartment. That’s going to change. Besides, pasta makes me tired anyway and it takes away any drive I have going that day. I’ve given up pop before and I can do it again. Sweets is going to be a little harder since Jesse has such a sweet tooth (especially at the moment). I’m not giving up ice cream because I’ll need something sweet and I can get that fat-free and it’ll still taste somewhat good. Plus, I love my Popsicles, as does Ian. Exercising is going to be hard. I have a couple of the Billy Blanks Bootcamp DVDs here and I should do them, but I always feel like an idiot doing aerobics by myself. I would walk, but I’m not comfortable doing that around here. At least not by myself with Ian. We have the Clinton River Trail running behind the complex and there is another one going through the nature reserve we’re next to, but neither are in a well-lit area or a well-traveled area. It creeps me out too much. So this decision has been made….I’m going on a diet and I’m sticking with it. It’s going to take a lot of will power that I don’t have, but I’m hoping that everyone will be supportive and help me keep at it.

Most mothers who breastfeed generally go into their infant bites them. I always thought that meant with teeth, but I’m beginning to realize that isn’t true. Ian doesn’t have any teeth yet, but he has some tough gums. It’s a natural reaction considering he’s on solid foods now, but he’s starting to bite more and my supply is going down anyway. I think it’s time to end the nursing. I wasn’t ready to stop just yet, but I’ve talked with the Ped’s office and they said that most mothers go about 6 months. I was hoping to go closer to 8-9 months, but what can I do. Plus, I’m fertile again and neither of us are ready for another kid. I think we would both lose it if I ended up pregnant. We want time to enjoy watching Ian grow without having to worry about another kid. The only way to ensure we don’t get pregnant is for me to go back on the pill and I can’t do that while I’m nursing. This is a tough decision, but Jesse and I have been talking about it and I think we’re ready to wean Ian off of it. I think the biggest problem we’re going to have is his night awakenings. Truthfully, he should be sleeping through the night, but when I can’t get him to calm down at 3am, nursing helps. Also, whenever I’ve tried giving him a bottle during the day, he doesn’t like it. He wants mama instead. He doesn’t fight the bottle at night. He knows he gets that one, but the ones during the days are different. I think Jesse will agree with this, but we’ll go until our anniversary. Then Ian is getting off of the breast milk and will be sticking to the Gerber foods and formula.

I want to go back to work. Not full time or anything big, but just something that’ll get me out of the house for a couple of hours a week. I’m thinking of getting a job at a retail shop during the weekends for the holiday season. I love being home with Ian, but I want to get out (plus the additional money would be nice). The biggest obstacle to this is day care. We can’t afford it, so we’re going to have to get it so Jesse can take care of Ian for eight hours straight. It takes a lot of patience and realizing that what you want to do isn’t a priority when watching Ian; and Jesse hasn’t accepted that yet. He’s been able to watch Ian for short spans of time, but if watching him gets in the way of him doing something he wants, he starts to lose patience. He’s always had me to fall back on and he won’t if I’m at work. We’re going to try an experiment where Jesse gets Ian for eight hours and I’ll be in the office the entire time just in case. Hopefully Jesse will be able to do it, but I have my doubts (especially considering we’ll have to find time to do it and I know Jesse has things he wants to do). He may surprise me, but I know him. He hasn’t had to get Ian to take a nap or try to figure out what is wrong or any of the small things. There have been a couple of times where I was able to rock Ian to sleep, but it wasn’t a quick 2 minute job. It took a good 10 minutes or longer and it required a lot of patience. Either way, this is a decision I can’t make on my own and I’m not expecting it to go the way I want. We’ll see what happens though.

We did it again. Last year we went camping at Orchard Beach State Park in Manistee and this year we went back for another round. Brad and Erin were unable to join us this year, however, Tim and Kathie came up instead. The weekend wasn’t quite like last year, but when you mix up the crowd, that tends to happen. The weather was really great all weekend. Much better than last year. It rained on the four hour car ride to the west side of the state, but it didn’t rain again until we were taking the tents down this morning. And even then, it really didn’t rain, just hiccuped a little.

Saturday night we went to Little River Casino and I actually made money. Well, sorta. Jesse and I each took in $10 and that is what we used to gamble with. I ended up leaving with $32. That’s not bad. Jesse didn’t do so hot, but he made up for it Sunday when we went back and I ended up losing all $10 I went in with and he came out with $14. Yeah Jesse!

We didn’t check it out last year, but we did get down to the Port City Street Fair that goes on during this same weekend. There was a bunch of arts and craft tables, some live music, and a bunch of food. At one end of the street, there was a car show going on, but I think we got to it towards the end. Most of the cars were gone when we went to check them out.

We definitely learned from our mistakes last year. We didn’t do community snack foods and I don’t think we spent that much on food. Beth and Jordan brought a lot of food with them, so there really wasn’t much for us to go shopping for. We didn’t go through anywhere near the amount of wood we did last year. Granted, it was warmer this year (by a lot), so there really wasn’t the need for a continuous fire. Don’t get me wrong, we had one, it just wasn’t roaring.

We ended up getting a new tent this year. After last year’s fiasco with the rain and the leaky tent, Jesse and I ended up with a six-person Coleman tent. It was a really nice tent, but there was one thing we were sorely lacking….an air mattress. That’s next year’s purchase. We have a decent tent now, we just need to fix the sleeping arrangements.

I think that’s about it. Jesse and I have already decided that we need to take Ian camping next spring (no he didn’t go with us this weekend, he spent it with grandma). I’m trying to convince Jesse that we should go for the Lilac Festival in Mackinaw Island in June. We’ll see if I can. Oh yeah, the pictures for this weekend are here. So enjoy.

It’s always weird when I start dreaming in Spanish. I’m actually pretty fluent in my dreams and that’s suppose to be a good thing; however, when I’m fluent, my dreams are usually really weird. I don’t remember much about my dream, but I do remember speaking in Spanish to Jesse because we were in his homeland, where I was a foreigner, and I wasn’t sure if they were suppose to know that I didn’t belong there. Like I said, weird. I have no idea where it was going or where I was coming from (I do remember huge leeches, but that could be spillover from that horrible SCI-Fi movie from last Saturday). I also have no idea where Jesse picked up Spanish and why he wasn’t from the same place I was. I did get a feeling that it was wrong for me to be in his homeland. Maybe it was a good thing that Ian woke me up when he did.

Another dream I’ve been having lately (although it has nothing to do with speaking in Spanish) has something to do with dairy farming. That may not seem weird, but remember, I’m still nursing Ian….now think about that.

I was running a search for a way to bake chicken for dinner tonight and I noticed something at the Betty Crocker site…..they have a bunch of recipes for 2 PEOPLE! Do you realize how hard it is to find recipes for 2 people? All the recipes tend to have “4 servings” and seriously, Jesse and I do not need that much food at one time. So anyway, I ran a search at the site for just “cooking for two” and it came up with 18 different recipes. Now I just need to go through them.

So a couple of crucial things have happened in the last 48 hours. The first one is the important one. I’ve finally got back to the gym. For the last couple of weeks, Jesse has been getting up early and heading to the gym for 30-45 minutes. I haven’t gone in the past because I wasn’t sure what we could do with Ian and he has a tendency to get up around 2-3am and again around 5-6am. For me, getting up 30 minutes after getting Ian back to sleep is not how I want to start off my day. I’m really tired at that point. Plus, how could Jesse and I go to the gym together? Who would watch Ian. I mean, it’s not like we could put him in his stroller and take him with us, right? Actually, that is exactly what we’re doing. Instead of getting up a the same time every morning, we’re getting up with Ian around his 5-6am wakening. I’m fairly awake at that point and staying up isn’t that much of a problem then. I’m still trying to get Ian to go back to sleep, but instead of putting him in his bed, we’re putting him in the stroller and he gets to continue sleeping while we’re at the gym. We started doing this yesterday, but today was the first time Ian went with us (Dad was here yesterday morning). The whole plan was contigent on Ian sleeping while we were there; however, for some unknown reason, Ian decided he wanted to wake up at 6am and stay up. So we still put him in the stroller and he had a ball with the ceiling fan. Jesse and I were at the gym for about 45 minutes and Ian never made a sound. He ended up falling back asleep on the walk back to the apartment, but he wasn’t fussy or crying. So it works. I think this will work out. I’ve been cutting back on my food intake to help me lose some of the massive amounts of weight I have gain and now I’ve started exercising again. I’m still going to try Weight Watchers, but I’m going to wait until this fall. The goal is to lose a lot of the weight I gained in college in case I do end up going to my 10 year reunion next year.

We have mice! Not one, not two, but three of them. Well, we did have three mice, but we don’t know if we have any more. That’s the other thing that happened in the last 48 hours. How do we know, you ask. Ask Jesse. Anyway, the maintenance guys were out yesterday to set two traps and one was sprung rather quickly. Unfortunately, two more were caught in the remaining trap last night. I am not amused. I do not like mice running around my home. They can be under glass in a zoo somewhere, but where I eat and stand and live….not happening. I really want to know how many there are so we can get rid of all of them. I hate mice.

We finally got Ian a bouncer. Actually, dad bought the bouncer for Ian yesterday and stayed to help me put it together. Ian started going nuts in it as soon as we put him in it. He’s not crazy about it when he’s tired, but that’s to be expected.