I also realized that I could go much further. So I decided to take some baby steps towards being more free-range. Alex has started to recognize that boys shouldn’t go into the women’s rest room when we are out. He has been asking to use the men’s room by himself. (Since I obviously can’t go in with him) So I decided that in select places I would allow him to use the men’s room without me. I still choose to use a family restroom when it is available, and there are still places and times that I make him come in the women’s room with me, but I have been loosening my grip some. And you know what, it has been working. I can see a difference in him, in the way he behaves and acts. Some of his “babyish” behavior has gone, not all of it, but it is getting there. I can tell that he feels much more grown up. He loves his new responsibilities, one of which is to take the recycling out to the bin in the front of the house by himself. I have implemented the same philosophy with my 2 year old daughter (though not to the same extent since she is still only 2) He now loves being the “big boy” instead of trying to act like his younger sister. He is doing better in school this year as well.

Today was my first real test in being Free-Range. Here in lovely NJ it is a balmy 20 – 30 degrees this week. So needless to say we have been inside a lot this week. Not because I won’t let the kids go outside, but because they go out and come back in 10 min. late since it is so windy and cold out. They have been getting a small case of cabin fever. So I decided that we needed to make a trip to the Please Touch Museum. I knew going in that it was going to be pretty crazy there. It is Christmas break and it is freezing cold outside. I knew there were going to be a ton of parents doing the same thing I was doing. Getting the kids out of the house for a few hours.

The differences in Alex and Lizzie has never been more apparent than it was today. Alex races from one exhibit to another and back again like a giant ping pong ball. Lizzie on the other hand, finds one spot and will stay and play for ages. That is just who they are. If I make Alex stay in one spot until Lizzie is done playing, he gets bored and starts to cause trouble. If I drag Lizzie along after Alex, she doesn’t get to actually play and experience the museum. And I can’t be two places at once, it is just physically impossible, I am only one person and they are two. I decided that what I needed to do was to loosen my grip a little. What I ended up doing was giving Alex an area in which he could play. This is actually pretty easy to do at this museum because of the way it is set up. I told him that he could go anywhere in that area he wanted but that he couldn’t leave that area until Lizzie and I were ready to leave. I  also told him that he needed to check in with me every once in a while so that I could lay my eyes on him occasionally. Let me tell you how well this worked out. I was able to stay with Lizzie and allow her to play the way she wanted, and it allowed Alex to ping pong from one exhibit to another. At the beginning of the trip I sat down with both the kids and explained the rules and showed both kids what the people who worked there looked like. I explained that if they got lost to go to an employee and tell them they were lost. We have been there enough times to know where the bathrooms were and how to use them. So I was confident that we wouldn’t have any problems.

It was the most relaxed trip to the museum I have had with the kids yet. I wasn’t stressed about where the kids were and what they were doing. I even got to sit for a few min. on one of those wonderful benches that were put there for the parents. As we were leaving I took a look around at all the other parents who were leaving at the same time we were, and you know what, I was the most relaxed one in the bunch. Nothing happened to the kids, nobody tried to abduct them, nobody got lost, and nobody was hurt in any way and we all had a great day. I can’t wait to go back, although I think I will use my Safety-Tats next time I go so that if Alex did happen to wander away and couldn’t find his way back the employees would know how to get in touch with me.

Have a happy, and safe, and Free-Range New Year

Heather

My final weight is 258.8

I don’t see much of a difference in my body shots, but here it is.

Heather

My oldest son Alex has been taking a karate class at the Little Gym. We love it, he is really learning to focus and is doing much better both in and out of school. The class is a late afternoon class, so there is a mixed age range, and a mixed parent group. Stay at home, working, work at home, etc.. There are these two women who are very snobby and you average “I’m better than you because…” type of women. Well I must have a target on my back that says “FREAK” because man are they judgmental, especially towards me, and especially once they found out that I am a homeschooling stay at home mom, who uses cloth diapers. Immediately they assumed that I must not be as good as them because of all those things say to them that I don’t have as much money as they do. (By the way, I am not assuming this, they have pretty much come right out and said this)  Anyway, their boys have been bullying Alex. The first few times I let it go under the premise that boys are boys and they play a little rough. The third time this happened I became upset. I said something to the teacher, and then at the urging of both my awesome husband and the karate teacher I said something to the mother. I got a snotty, irrational response. Basically why should I have to discipline my children because of yours type thing. That may not have been what she was thinking at the time, but that is how it came off to me.

So this happens last Thursday, then today I have been engaging in and following a debate about covering up while breastfeeding in public. And the amount of judging going on over there is outrageous. To think that people assume that you want people to look at you while you are trying to feed your child, or that you are trying to arouse men, is just laughable.

My point is, why does everybody need to judge everybody else. You don’t know their specific situation, and unless you are very close to that person you may never know the whole situation. In the case of the women at the karate class. She had no idea that I grew up in the area that she thinks of as prestigious, and that if I wanted to work or send my kids to school I could, and if  I wanted to use disposable diapers I would.  Basically instead of assuming the best about the people around us we are so busy assuming the worst.  What drives me even more insane is the people who do the most judging get insanely angry when they are judged by others. Has nobody ever heard of “Treat others the way you want to be treated”

Okay, so I guess I didn’t have a specific point to this post, it is more of a rant. I needed to get some things off my chest.

GAG Challenge -

Today I am very thankful that I have a wonderful, awesome husband who is willing to take time from his busy schedule to go to said karate class with me this week to face down the nasty ladies.

Heather

This week my main goal is to not eat when I am stressed or upset. I have a very stressful couple of days coming up in the next few days, specifically tonight and tomorrow. I am going to have to really work to not eat mindlessly.

Have a great week.

Heather

And guess what, it seems to have worked. I weighed in this morning at 261.0. That is 11 lbs. that I lost. I was actually worried about losing that much (I still am) for several reasons. That is a lot of weight to lose so quickly, I worry that it isn’t healthy, and that I am doing something wrong. I am also worried that people are going to think I am cheating, but I promise I am not. I actually weighed myself several times this morning so see if the scale was wrong. I just keep telling myself that it can’t be right. My wonderful husband keeps reminding me that I probably lost a lot of water weight and that the next few weeks, I probably won’t lose anything. He is right I am sure.

Our point challenge this week is going to be a difficult one for me.

For every 8 oz of water you drink, you will give yourself 10 points.
For every 15 minutes of activity (NO house cleaning and “normal” activities should be counted here) outside of your normal routine give yourself 10 points.
For every day that you track your foods whether it be on your blog via in text or photos, give yourself 20 points.
For every evening you sleep for a minimum of 8 hours, give yourself 20 points!

I am horrible at keeping track of what I eat and drink. I just get busy doing whatever I am doing that day and forget to write things down and by the time I remember I have forgotten what it was I ate or drank that day. As for additional activity, I am going to try to get up in the mornings and walk again, but I get very grumpy when I don’t get enough sleep, so early morning is hard. The sleeping part is the easy part, like I said, I get grumpy if I don’t get enough sleep so I have always gone to bed early and tried to get in at least 8 hours of sleep a night.

On a side note, I have fallen in love with strawberries all over again. I love that they are so low in calories, (I forget who, but somebody once told me that it takes more calories to digest a strawberry than you get from eating the strawberry). They have become my new snack food. Plus they are sweet, so they help with my horrible sweet tooth at the end of the day.

Well I think I got in everything I wanted to say.

Have a great day.

Heather

Like I said before, both kids are in preschool this year. Well if you can call Lizzie’s class preschool, it is more like an organized play group where I don’t have to be present. They don’t do very much school work, it is a bunch of two year olds after all. I think it is going to be a great year for both of them. Alex has grown up so much over the course of the summer. We are still having some of the same problems that we were having at the end of last year, but they are much less and he is learning how to cope with things much better, plus he is finally potty trained, which is a huge thing for us. I am doing a little bit of homeschooling this year. I am planning a Bible Study with the kids on Tuesday and Thursday the days that we are home. It is a toddler program, but I am adapting it to work with both my toddler and preschooler. It is actually the same program that we are using with the toddlers at church so I am very excited about that. Another big thing that we have started here at home is chores for the kids. Both the kids have always helped with things like taking their dishes to the sink, putting dirty clothes in the hamper, things like that. I decided that it was time to give them a little more responsibility now that they are older.

Here are their chore lists:

Alex

1. Brush Teeth in morning and night
2. Take a bath or shower every day
3. Get lotion on
4. Put clothes in hamper
5. put shoes away
6. put books away
7. make bed
8. put backpack away
9. Set the table at dinner and lunch
10. clean up playroom
11. Help clear table
12. Help put away clean clothes
13. Stay clean and dry all day (potty)
14. Clean up outside toys
15. Try one new food a day

Lizzie

1. Brush teeth in morning and night
2. Take a bath and wash hair everyday
3. put clothes in hamper
4. put shoes away
5. put books away
6. Make my bed
7. put backpack away
8. Set table at lunch and dinner
9. clean up playroom
10. take dishes to the sink
11. clean up outside toys.

Surprisingly they have been so excited to do their chores every day. I know a lot of it is stuff that we were doing anyway, but I wanted to get them started on things that I knew that they could accomplish. As they get older we will add more chores for them to do, so that they learn to help out around the house. If the do all their chores during the week then on Friday they get to go to either Wendy’s or Chick-Fil-A for lunch. This would not have been my first choice of things to do since I am now officially on a diet, but that is what they wanted to do, so I will have to learn to deal.

I am really looking forward to this new school year and all the fun it will bring.

Heather

These are my before shots:

Not pretty I know.

My goals are pretty simple. I want to lose two pounds a week, which is pretty doable. I am working on drinking more water and watching what I eat. Especially the mindless eating.

Talk to you soon

Heather

Well we are back to the beginning of my 12 week plan. As I start the 12 weeks over I will probably make small changes from week to week. It is mostly produce related. Now that it is summer I like to use as much fresh produce as possible. My menus are planned using frozen veggies and some frozen fruit. It is does call for something fresh it is usually something that I can get year round, like carrots, potatoes, etc.. So I will be substituting fresh veggies and fruit wherever I can this summer, depending on what is available.

I am not going to put all my recipes in, some of the meals, especially breakfast are pretty common, but if there is something you would like a recipe for that I didn’t add, please feel free to ask.

Week 1:  Breakfast Meal Plan

Meal 1: Banana Bread

3 or 4 bananas
½ cup applesauce
1-cup sugar
3 eggs
2 2/3 cup flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
¾ tsp. salt

Preheat the oven to 375 and prepare bread pan.  Cream the applesauce, sugar and the eggs.  Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and bananas.  Stir until the batter is well mixed. Pour into prepared pan.  Bake about 50 min, or until bread is done. Cool before serving.

Meal 2: French Toasted Banana Bread
4 eggs
1-teaspoon sugar, optional
1-teaspoon salt
1-cup rice milk
Leftover banana bread
Ghee
Maple syrup or other syrup

Break eggs into a wide, shallow bowl or pie plate; beat lightly with a fork. Stir in sugar, salt, and rice milk.

Over medium-low heat, heat griddle or skillet coated with a thin layer of ghee or margarine.

Place the bread slices, one at a time, into the bowl or plate, letting slices soak up egg mixture for a few seconds, then carefully turn to coat the other side. Soak/coat only as many slices as you will be cooking at one time.

Transfer bread slices to griddle or skillet, heating slowly until bottom is golden brown. Turn and brown the other side. Serve French toast hot with ghee and syrup.

Recipe for French toast serves 4.

Meal 3: Scrambled Eggs with Toast

Meal 4: Pancakes

Meal 5: Cream of Wheat

1/4 cup 10 minute Cream of Wheat (yellow box)
1.5 T ghee
2 T sugar
1/4 t kosher salt
1/4 t cinnamon
1/4 t good vanilla extract
2.25 to 2.5 cups rice milk

Melt 1 T of ghee in a medium saucepan over medium low heat. Once melted, add the cream of wheat and stir often until it just barely begins to brown. (If you go too far and get noticeable browning, throw it out and start over.) Stirring constantly, add 2.25 cups of rice milk, reserving the remaining 1/4-cup to adjust the consistency later. You’ll get a burst of steam when you first start to add the rice milk to the frying cream of wheat, so watch out, but if you don’t stir at this point, you’ll get lumps. Once the rice milk has been added, turn the heat down to low, and add the salt, sugar and cinnamon. Let cook slowly for about ten minutes, stirring often, then stir in the vanilla and remove from heat. The porridge will continue to cook for a bit, and will thicken some as it cools. Consistency is key here — you want the finished product to have the texture of a warm loose pudding, which means it needs to be on the liquidy side at this point. If it’s too thick, add a bit more rice milk to thin it out. Cover the saucepan and let it sit for five minutes or so, then stir in the remaining half T of ghee and pour into two bowls.

Meal 6: Cereal with Fresh Fruit

Week 1:  Dinner Meal Plan
Day 1: Roast Beef, Mashed Potatoes and Gravy, Mixed Vegetables.
Day 2: Chicken Fajitas, Tortilla Chips and Salsa
Day 3: Chicken Sandwiches, Tater Tots, Fruit Salad
Day 4: Beef Stew over Rice
Day 5: Meatloaf, Baked Potatoes, Green Beans

Enjoy and have a great week.

Week 12 Breakfast

Meal 1: Waffles
Meal 2: Egg and Cheese Breakfast Sandwich
Meal 3: Pumpkin Muffins
Meal 4: Cherry Muffins
Meal 5: Crock-pot Cobbler
Meal 6: Cereal with Fresh Fruit

Week 12 Dinner

Meal 1: Crock-pot Chicken Tacos, Refried Beans, Corn
Meal 2: BBQ Meatballs, French Fries, Corn on the Cob
Meal 3: Bison Burgers, Baked Beans, Salad
Meal 4: Roast Chicken with Vegetables
Meal 5: Crock-pot BBQ Ribs, Cornbread, Mixed Vegetables