So I have been wanting to write a post about this for some time.  I wanted to finish the book first however.  This is a topic that is very important to me. Both my husband and I are very big on natural consequences, and letting kids be kids. A few weeks ago, after I was telling my mom that my neighbor didn’t like that I let my kids play out in the fenced in back yard without me, she bought me this book.  I love it.

In a nutshell, the book is saying that we as a culture have been overprotecting our kids at our kids expense. Kids are no longer allowed to be kids. The author goes on to explain that kids these days are just as safe as we were as kids and are missing out on some pretty valuable experiences. One of the big ones is being able to go outside and just play. I remember as a kid being kicked out of the house and told I had to be home by the time the street lights came on. I wasn’t restricted to the back yard, heck I wasn’t even restricted to the front yard. In my neighborhood growing up there were 4 houses in a row with children all around my age. There were 6 of us who ran all over the neighborhood playing all sorts of games. We played out in the rain, hot scorching sun, and pleasant spring days, and nobody thought any thing of it. Our parents were not worried that we would be abducted. Why, because we lived in a safe neighborhood and most of the neighbors knew us and would make sure our parents knew if we were doing something we shouldn’t.

Basically Lenore Skenazy (the author of the book) gives 14 commandments on having Free Range kids and goes over many of the most common worries that parents face today. I highly recommend the book for anyone who is in contact with children. I think we need to give our kids more freedom, the same freedom that we had as kids. It is good for them. There is also a blog to check out.

Today I am thankful for fellow bloggers who don’t mind when I rant instead of writing an actual post with a point.

So last week on GAG we were asked to give a goal for the week. My goal for the week was to not drink any soda, diet or regular. I have to admit it wasn’t easy, and there was two days last week were I had a soda. Thursday was an extremely stressful day and I caved and had a soda that night. Sunday we went to dinner at my grandparents. My grandfather remembers my college days when I drank a ton of soda. He insists that I have to have a coke every time I go over there. I didn’t have the heart to say no. I am weak I know.  As I said before, I am going to keep working on this, and one day I will be soda free.

Have a great week.

Heather

I am weighing in at 255.7 today. Not bad at all considering I ate lunch out a lot this week, as well as not really having a menu plan this week.

My goal for this week is to not drink any soda, I am going to work on drinking only water or crystal light.

Have a good week.

This question intrigued me. My immediate thought was that I wasn’t go to write a post about this question.  There is not much I wouldn’t do differently. Simply for the fact that everything that I did or didn’t do in the past has brought me to the point where I am today, and God has used those things to shape me into the person I am today. Except for my weight and fitness level, I am very happy with who I am today. So it took me a few days to think about what I would change, if anything. Then I realized that my weight and fitness level, the very things that I am unhappy with, were what I would change. Well at least how I got to the point I am at today. I think the key was the year I stopped swimming.

All through my childhood, and adolescence I was a swimmer. Every summer, and every winter in high school, I swam on a swim team. I was in great shape and had a killer metabolism. I could pretty much eat whatever I wanted (which is where a lot of my bad habits started) and it didn’t matter because whatever my body didn’t burn, I burned in the pool. I was swimming close to 2000 yards a day. I hit my peak my Sophmore and Junior year. Those two years I was swimming every morning and had drama every night. I was out of the house from 4 in the morning till 12 at night. I was very active and probably burned most of what I was eating, even when I ate junk, which is most of what I ate. My grades also suffered that year. They were never bad, just not as good as they could have been. So my parents insisted that I cut back on something. I had to choose, swimming or drama. As much as I loved to swim, I loved drama more, so that is what I chose. I knew that I would never swim competitively in college or beyond, I wasn’t fast enough, so I decided to focus on the drama.

That is what I would change. I would quit the drama not the swimming. I think if I had stayed with it my last year of high school, I would have been more likely to stick with it in college, even if I didn’t swim on a team, I had full access to a pool in college, If I hadn’t taken that year off I would have continued to at least swim on my own time at school. I stopped when I was 17, and except for a few half-hearted attempts I haven’t picked it back up. I do believe that I would in a very different place, weight and fitness wise if I were still swimming.

I do still think about joining a gym with a pool now and then, lately since GAG, it is more often than not. I still worry about putting the kids in the childcare. I am terrified that they are going to be sick constantly. In actuality it would probably be short lived, kinda like the first year they are in a new school. They catch everything that comes down the block, but then they build up immunities and they are fine.  I have actually considered telling people when they ask what I want for Christmas/Birthday, a gym membership, so that I can pick up swimming again. I hesitate though, not really sure why. It seems like an unneeded added expense.

That is one of the questions that Sue from GAG asked us this week. I answered this question first because this is probably the easiest one for me to answer.

SODA

This above anything else is what I struggle with the most. I always have from the time I was in high school. I probably had the most trouble with soda while I was in college. I was never a coffee drinker, so my caffeine intake of choice during college was soda, particularly Coke and Cherry Coke. At one point I was up to a 2 liter bottle a day. And since I can’t stand the taste of diet soda, and believe me I tried, I was unknowingly (at that time anyway) consuming thousands of calories a day, just in soda. All that soda had other side affects as well. I was getting horrendous headaches almost everyday. Of course at that time, I was not connecting the soda drinking with the headaches, and the weight gain. I probably hit my peak, my last semester of school when I was student teaching. Anybody who has student taught, knows that it is exhausting. So to stay awake in the afternoons so that I could get my work done, I was drinking large amounts of soda. Once I got out of college and was working I was able to slow down a little. I was teaching in a preschool class, which is not as demanding of your time in the evenings, so I didn’t feel the need to drink quite so much caffeine.  It was at that point that the headaches went away and I put two and two together. I didn’t start losing weight, but that is for completely different reasons.

It was at this point that I realized that I needed to cut back on my soda drinking. I was living at home again, so it was easier to control how much I drank, mostly because my parents only bought diet soda, and like I said before, I can’t stand diet soda. Since then I have drastically cut back on how much I drink. Even to the point of going for weeks at a time without drinking any. Once I knew that the soda was contributing to my weight gain, I was even more determined to cut it out of my diet. And every time the soda wins. It is almost like a drug at this point. I can go for a few weeks, even up to a month without it, and then I have a hard day and that is what I crave at the end of the day.

At one point I really did think it was the caffeine that I was craving. So I tried drinking tea instead. I have been told that tea has more caffeine than soda anyway. Guess what, it didn’t work, I still craved the soda. I think it is the combination of the sugar and the caffeine. It is something that I still struggle with every day. Some days and weeks are better than others, and I continue to work on it everyday. I am much better now at choosing water or something else that isn’t soda when we are out to eat. I don’t buy any soda, so it isn’t in the house, which often is half the battle.

I will continue to work on it, because I do believe that one day, this will be one habit that I no longer have to worry about breaking.

Here we are at the end of October and fall is in the air. When the wind was blowing over everything on my deck last week I realized that it might be time to start gearing up for winter. If the temperatures this summer are anything to go by I have a feeling that we are in for a chilly long winter. Global Warming here we come. I read somewhere that this was the coolest summer in our area on record for something like 20 years. Anyway I digress. In the process of clearing off the deck and taking the table down I realized that a ton of leaves have fallen in the last week. Which also explains why I am finding leaves all over the house. I realized that I would have to get out the trusty rake and actually rake the leaves. I was ready to wage war against the leaves. I am pretty sure that the leaves won. All I did was the pine needles, since that is what we all are allergic to I wanted to get them up and out of the way. The maple leaves have not all fallen yet, so I figured I would wait to do those leaves until they had all fallen. Yesterday Sunday I started. My wonderful husband came out and helped me to rake, as did the kids. Although I am not sure if you can call it helping since all the kids did was spread the needles around rather than rake them into a pile, but they are still learning. By the time we were done yesterday the four of us together had gotten all the needles from the back to the curb, and my husband had collected all the large branches and sticks and put them out by the curb for pick up as well. Not bad for and hour or so of work. So when today rolled around and the kids woke up from their rest I figured how hard can it be to rake up the pine needles in the front yard. There is only one tree and it is in a pretty confined area. Easy right? You would be wrong, as was I. the pine needles kicked my behind. Yes it only took me a half an hour to rake that small area, but by the time I was done I thought I was going to fall over. I was hoping that it might help me to burn some calories before my weigh in tomorrow morning. I did get my heart rate up, and I did work up a good sweat, but it was only a half an hour so I am not too hopeful. The good news is that because I wasn’t in the house when the kids first went out to play they didn’t hover at the back door. Instead they are now playing outside on this beautiful day, giving me the chance to write this. I am also thinking that since it is such a nice day and Jason isn’t going to be home for dinner, I may just take a late walk with the kids this afternoon, and make PB&J for dinner.

Heather

So this is our points challenge this week,

GAME TWO: SAY GOODBYE TO YOUR COMFORT ZONE.

It’s time to shake things up.

Between Tuesday October 20th and Monday October 26th you will receive 100 extra challenge points for every new activity/exercise/class you try. So, if you’re a walker and you add some interval running to your routine? BAM. 100 points. If you’ve always wanted to give Spinning a go? BAM 100 points. If you are interested to see if you are, in fact, that one person who has forgotten to ride a bike? BAM. 100 points. And of course, if you decide to Zumba? You guessed it. 100 points.

I have spent the week trying to come up with something, anything. At first I figured, hey this is easy, right now I am not doing any exercising, so doing something, anything is a step in the right direction, plus possibly a hundred points. There is my problem, I started thinking. I saw the weather report this week and thought, “excellent it is going to be a beautiful week, I can go out and walk” HA, has anyone out there tried to walk with a two year old and a four year old. We did go out and walk, but it wasn’t what I would call exercise. Can you really call it exercise when you stop every 30 seconds to look at leaves, sticks, bugs, the cracks in the sidewalk. Now don’t get me wrong, it was a great walk, the kids discovered all sorts of things and we all had a great time, but it wasn’t exercise, it took us 30 minutes to walk around the block. I realized that in order to actually get some exercise in, it would have to be without the kids. (for the record, I knew this, but I was hoping it wasn’t really true) So when do I have time without the kids? The answer your looking for is late at night or early in the morning, neither of which is a good time for me. I am neither a night owl, or a morning person, I just don’t function very well at either of those times. Over the summer I tried getting up at 5 am to go out and walk before the kids got up and my husband had to leave for work. I was very grumpy on the days that I got up that early. Not only that, but I could never really walk as much as I wanted to because my feet and legs hurt a lot while I was walking, I am still to this day not sure why, but they did.

So, getting up early is not a good idea, walking with the kids is not working. Next idea, going out after the kids are in bed. For me that is just not an option. That is my time with my husband, and to wind down at the end of the day. Often when I sit down after the kids are in bed, it is the first time I have sat down all day, other than when I was folding laundry. The last thing I want to do is go out and walk, take some sort of class etc.. Also, like I said, that is my time with my husband. We put the kids to bed early so that we can spend time together without the kids, and I think that is more important then any exercise class I could go to.

My next idea was to join a gym, I thought of this over the summer. Specifically a gym with a pool. When I was younger I used to swim a lot. I was on my high school swim team and loved every minute of it. I love the water. I can swim much much longer and get in more exercise than I ever could walking or running, or taking a class. I joined a gym with a two week trial membership. The gym had a child care facility so I could drop the kids off and go swim for an hour all by myself. The kids were in the child care once before they both got sick. If I am going to be taking care of sick kids more than I could exercise, than it is not worth it to me, especially with the H1N1 virus floating around this year.

That left me with the 4 hours a week that the kids are both in school. Wednesdays and Fridays both the kids are in school from 9 – 11:30. Sounds like a great time to exercise. right. Well Friday is my time. I usually spend Friday mornings sitting in a coffee shop, upstairs at Wegmans, a book store, somewhere quiet working on my Bible study, and honestly my time with God comes first. So that leaves Wednesdays, that is the day I do my grocery shopping. I could take the kids with me on another day, and this week, I got done my shopping very early, so I did go walk around the mall until I had to pick the kids up, but it just didn’t feel like enough.

I do have a Wii fit and the EA Active game for the Wii. I should be better about doing both of those. I just don’t have much motivation right now. That is what I am going to work on for this weekend, getting up the motivation to get in a workout. If anybody has any other ideas I would be happy to listen. Obviously I am in a rut when it comes to exercise. I have a million excuses and no motivation. I keep thinking that it shouldn’t have to be so hard.

In typical fashion last week went flying by. It really got away from me, and what a week it has been. First things first, my GAG weigh in. I used my first free pass this week. It was not a great week, I was stressed and very down. I tend to forget what I am doing when I am feeling like that and snack a lot. It was better than it could have been since I don’t keep high calorie snacks in the house. I was also PMSing this week, so that didn’t help at all. In the end when I finally did get on the scale, I hadn’t lost weight, but I hadn’t gained any either, which is a good thing.

You are probably now asking, why was last week a rough week? It is the same answer it usually is, school. I am so glad that we have chosen to home school starting next year. In the meantime though we have to get through this year. If you didn’t already know, Alex is a very active little boy. He does have some trouble sitting still and sharing with other kids, nothing that really has me concerned though. School is a different matter. He is in the oldest class in his preschool this year, the 4 year old class. Well I thought that he was doing okay. At least that is what the teachers told me after his first week. Well last week, his second week, I found out that he wasn’t really doing all that well. He wasn’t sitting when he was supposed to and was having a lot of trouble getting along with the other kids. This of course has me stressed out because I know what a sweet, happy, well behaved little boy he can be, and is when he is not in school. All his problems center around school. I know he is not perfect and yes he does have problems at home, but nothing more than any other 4 year old with a younger, sometimes annoying little sister. I was at a loss as what to do with him, since nothing my husband and I were saying to him seemed to be registering.We talked about his behavior all weekend, we took away his dinner out on Friday because of his behavior, nothing seemed to work. Monday he went to school and had an even worse day, and I was completely strung out and frustrated. I hate to sound like the parent who is saying that their child can do no wrong, and is perfect all the time. However, that being said, I do think the school needs to take some ownership here. I believe that a big part of the problem is that he is bored at school. He is way above about half of the class, if not more. Last year when they tested him at the end of the year, he was in the top five in a group of 24. That is both classes in the school that are his age. At home we are working on reading and counting to 70, while at school they are still just introducing the letter and numbers to 10. This is stuff he has been doing for years.

I spent all day yesterday and all last night praying about the situation. I am fully prepared to take him out of school and start homeschooling right away. He is more than capable of handling the kindergarten material. This morning I decided that rather than do my usual prayer about school in the car after I drop them off, I would pray with the kids after we parked the car and before we went in to school. Well guess what, both kids had a much better day today. (Lizzie, who is very strong willed, has been raging an all out war on the teachers, in an attempt to show them who is the boss. In her opinion it should be her) Alex was crying when I picked him up, but that was because he had to use the bathroom and somebody was already in there. I am going to continue praying everyday, I really want both the kids to have a great year. Plus the selfish side of me is enjoying going grocery shopping without the kids, and I love having 2 1/2 hours on Friday to do whatever it is I want to do, no kids attached.

Thanks for listening to me vent.

On a side note, please pray for a little girl from our church. I can’t go into details, but she needs all the prayer she can get.

God Bless

Heather.

GAG Start Weight: 272

Last Week Weight: 260

This Week Weight: 259

Lost This Week: 1 lb.

Total Lost: 13 lb.

I would love to have lost more than a pound, but considering that Women of Faith was this weekend, and I tend to snack a lot during the conference, and considering that I was sick most of the day Saturday and Sunday. I think I did okay. We don’t have anything planned for this weekend, so I am hoping that I can continue all the good work that I accomplish during the week,and have more than a 1 pound loss next week.

Heather

I know I haven’t written much the last few weeks. The kids started school last week and Women of Faith was last weekend. Top that all off with a family cold that the kids brought home from school, I didn’t go near the computer as much last week. Other than the cold that kicked my but last weekend, It was a great week.

Alex started school on Monday. He now goes three days a week. I was a little concerned about this, since in the past he has not been able to handle that much activity for that many days during the week. I have always had to make sure that he was not out of the house for more than two days a week. Any more than that and he started to act out and make life generally difficult. I always just figured it was his way of telling me that this was too much. That is one of the many reasons we decided to homeschool next year. He is just one of those kids who does much better at home in the more relaxed environment.  So I was very pleased that last week he did great all three days at school. He didn’t have any accidents, and I didn’t get any negative reports from his teachers, in fact when I asked how he was doing, they had all positive things to say. We will see if he continues to do this well as the school year progresses, but I am very hopeful. He has matured a lot over the course of the summer. Here at home we are having much less problems with him then we were a year ago. This is how he always has been. I often say jokingly that he is like a plant or a tree. He grows a lot in the spring and summer months and than doesn’t grow much during the colder fall and winter months.  It seems that Lizzie is following in his foot steps in that regard as well.

Lizzie started school last week as well. She goes to her play group two days a week. The first day was a little dicey, the teachers told me that she didn’t listen as well as she should have, but she did much better the second day. She seems to be enjoying school, but she still tells me every day that she doesn’t want to to go back. I think she is more trying to exert some control over the situation.  She likes it and does want to go back, but wants me to know that if she chose to, she doesn’t have to go. It is just her strong willed personality showing through. Nobody makes Lizzie do anything that she doesn’t want to do.

I am not doing a daytime Bible Study this year, nor am I doing Mom’s Time Out this year. I decided that with the kids in school so much this year that adding a weekly Bible Study, and Mom’s Time Out would just be too much this year. I miss all the wonderful ladies that I have gotten to know through both those activities, but I am so glad that I am not doing that this year. I have been so relaxed the last few weeks. I am just not feeling the stress that I used to feel about getting everything at the house done and all the outside activities done as well. We seem to have fallen into a great workable schedule, where I don’t feel like I am neglecting any thing that needs to get done. I also think that is why the kids have been so well behaved the last few weeks. I am not nearly as stressed, so they are calmer and more behaved as a result.

Even though I am not doing a day time Bible Study, I am still participating in a Bible Study this fall. I am taking a study with the women’s group at our church. We are going to be reading the book, “Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World” I am really looking forward to this study for a number of reason. This book being the first one. It is all about finding intimacy with God in the chaos of our busy lives. Something I can def. learn more about. I am also looking forward to getting to know the women in the study more. It is such a great bunch of women, and I have always had a heart for Women’s Ministry. I loved organizing Women of Faith this year and I can’t wait to get started on next year. I found out this weekend that I will be going to a group leader seminar for Women of Faith in Texas this January. It is aimed at helping us to be more effective group leaders. I can’t wait to go and hear what they have to say. I already have several ideas floating around my head for next year. I can’t wait to get started.

All in all, I am a really good place right now. I have a great, awesome, husband who is so supportive of everything I do. I am finally losing this weight that has hung on for years now. The kids are doing great, and I am enjoying being their mom. I also really feel like I have found my place at church. I am doing what it is God wants me to be doing, and hopefully doing it well. I am really looking forward to the rest of this year.

Heather