31.3.11

comfort food

Today is one of those not-so-nice spring days. You know, the one that is more of a winter day than a spring day...

I'm making meatloaf for dinner tonight, served with mashed potatoes, green beans, and brown gravy. I haven't made meatloaf in ages, and it's the right kind of day for a meatloaf meal...

What comfort foods do you enjoy? And what's for dinner tonight?

lazy Thursday

The weather has suddenly turned from nice to total crap. It was snowing earlier, this wet snow that gets nasty when it hits the ground. Now it's raining. Bah. Indoor weather for sure...

I did manage to force myself to go out while it was snowing since I needed to buy diapers and some groceries for dinner. Rather than use the pram, I used our baby carrier. He was awake at the start, and was rather fascinated with the snowflakes. However, with all that excitement, he fell asleep shortly after I started walking towards the store :-)

Pingu actually napped almost properly today. He slept for about an hour this afternoon, which is great since I've been having a hard time getting to sleep at all in during the day, unless I take him out in the pram. I had some stuff to do, but was able to manage a half hour lie-down. I still need more sleep though...

27.3.11

I hate daylight savings...

I really need the hour that I have now lost. Because of it, I probably won't be able to take Pingu out in the pram so that he can get some fresh air. I'm off-schedule and in a bad mood because of it. Everything feels so wrong today...

I didn't make it to the gym until noon; I had been hoping to go between 10 and 11. Grrr. I did mostly upper body work and I'm still pathetically weak since I'm only able to do proper strength training once a week. My hips will be screwy for quite some time, or so they say, so no heavy squats for a while. Not sure what to do about the evil legs. I'll figure it out. Not this moment though... *grumble*

Running is getting better. I did some treadmill work yesterday and it felt pretty good. I warmed up for 10 minutes on the elliptical again, and I think next time I can cut that out and warm up on the treadmill, or cut it down to five minutes. We'll see. I was also able to run faster this time. But still too slow for me. Nonetheless, I think I'll be ready for some Tabatas next week. And hopefully in a few weeks it will be possible to run outside. It's starting to get warm enough, but it's rather dirty and nasty - lots of sand and gravel and leftover snow and other crap. It gets windy this time of year and all that crap blows into your eyes and you have to breathe it in too... yuck. They really need to clean up the streets soon...

Pingu is 11 weeks 1 day today, and I hope to get some photos taken since we didn't do anything last weekend. But as mentioned earlier, this daylight savings crap has thrown off the timing of everything... :-(

25.3.11

cute and cuddly...

Taken using my mobile phone. I really should use my proper camera for shots like this...

21.3.11

10 weeks of Pingu-related facebook status messages

Not all of them, but most of them ;-)

Jan 9: Pingu is here! He decided to show up 8th of January at 23:17. He has blue eyes and lots of dark hair, is 49 cm long and 3232 grams. Now... to find a proper name for him!

Jan 10 feitpingvin loves the smell of newborn baby ♥

Jan 13 feitpingvin walked into the bedroom to see Pingu and husband of feitpingvin sleeping in the *exact* same position! ♥

Jan 15 feitpingvin has a feeling that little Pingu is going to end up with a career as professional competitive eater... :-P

Jan 16 feitpingvin has given Pingu his first shampoo and rinse. He really enjoyed having warm water poured over his head... ♥

Jan 22 feitpingvin and husband of feitpingvin have just been out and about with Pingu. First to the curry house for lunch, followed by a nice walk through the botanic garden, and then tasty apple tarts at the Munch Museum café. Pingu slept the whole time ♥

Jan 28 feitpingvin wonders how it's possible for a nearly 3 week old baby to stay completely awake the whole night and most of the day. Don't babies like to sleep?

Feb 4 feitpingvin has milk puke all over her neck...

Feb 5: The joys of parenthood: power puke followed by power poop all over Pappa, power puke followed by power pee all over Mamma, and now rather pleased with Himself after a bath...

Feb 8 feitpingvin and husband of feitpingvin have both been blessed with big wet milky "kisses" from Pingu :-)

Feb 11 feitpingvin was at the clinic earlier today, to weigh Pingu. He's turning into quite the RoF baby: 4050 grams today, up from 3630 grams last week.

Feb 19 feitpingvin asked Pingu if he wanted to take a nap. Pingu raised a fist, stuck his thumb out, and then turned the thumb down...

Feb 27: Pappa: Pingu, are you going to gulp all over me?
Pingu: *smile*

Mar 3 feitpingvin has taken Pingu out to a café, so that he could flirt with some pretty girls... ♥

Mar 4 feitpingvin is holding Pingu over her shoulder; he is sucking her neck! OH NOES VAMPIRE BABY!1!

Mar 12 feitpingvin thinks it's amusing how babies sleep sometimes - flat on their back with their limbs all over the place. Kind of like dogs... :-P

Mar 15 feitpingvin is rather impressed with the belches and farts that Pingu can rip...

Mar 19 feitpingvin is watching Pingu happily play with a plush penguin ♥

20.3.11

squats

My postpartum hips are messing things up for doing proper heavy squats. I can only go up to 50 kg and then things start feeling really weird and wrong.

At the same time, it seems like doing deep squats while holding the baby is a good way to calm him down. So while it's not the same as having 80 kg on my back, I don't think I'm going to lose too much leg strength. Especially since I'll get more resistance as Pingu gets heavier...

19.3.11

postpartum - getting back into shape

Well... it's been 10 weeks since my little Pingu was born, and I need to whip my fat penguiny ass back into shape. Not necessarily to lose those last pregnancy kilos per se, although that is a desirable side-effect. I really need to 1) get my energy levels up, 2) avoid destroying all the hard work I've done before getting pregnant. Plus, Pingu will only benefit from an energetic Mamma who can keep up with him when he plays and stuff. People say that older moms hurt their kids by not having the energy to keep up the way a young mom can. Screw that...

I actually started going back to the gym 4 weeks postpartum. I could have started going earlier, and I could probably go more often if I had the chance to (lack of someone to watch Pingu while I'm at the gym on weekday). House hunting stole some time as well, although that is done and overwith. I try to make do at home. Simple stuff - bodyweight exercises and long trips with the pram (Pingu just sleeps). It's not the same as Krav Maga or hitting the weights, but it's better than nothing...

Today I did some running/jogging for the first time since week 30 of my pregnancy. I took it easy: After a 10 minute warmup on the elliptical, I started with walking/jogging intervals (on the treadmill) 1 min 7 km/h 1 min 9.5 km/h, and after 10 minutes changed the interval to 1 min 7 km/h 2 min 9.5 km/h, and at 20 minutes I ran/jogged for 10 minutes at 9.0 km/h. It was pretty easy so I'll go a little bit harder next time. Although it felt a bit weird; my hips are still "expanded" which throws things off a bit. I really hope the hips get back to somewhat normal soon *grrr*

I'm also wondering how my calves are going to feel tomorrow. Yeah, I wore the FFFFs ;-)

Excellent...

At this moment, my 10 week old son is happily playing with a big plush penguin that I placed in his crib. He's grabbing the penguin's flipper and stroking its back and making these really cute cooing noises...

This is a good thing. It's now possible for him to be awake without either me or husband of feitpingvin having to constantly entertain him. I might be able to start getting stuff done now :-)

10 weeks ago...

...my son was born. That is, he was born the 8th of January, at 23:17. He weighed in at 3232 grams and was 49 cm long, with a head circumference of 35 cm.

As you can see in the photo below, when he was about a day and a half old, he was also born with a rather impressive head of hair, and this is something which draws a lot of attention. I love his hair; it's very obvious who he got that from ;-)



The actual birth was OK. I didn't get the water birth I wanted due to a bunch of crazy circumstances. But it wasn't that bad either. I had to use some laughing gas since I didn't get the water, but other than that I didn't feel that drugs were necessary. If you breathe properly, you can manage a good amount of the pain. And it's true that you forget about it rather quickly. To be honest, I think it was much worse getting my broken nose snapped back into place than giving birth...

Of course life with a baby is a bit crazy, and rather trying at times. Being a first time mom, I sometimes feel completely clueless and even useless at times. The first few weeks were difficult because I always felt like I had no idea what I was doing much of the time. But my little Pingu is growing and thriving. He's becoming a properly plump baby (5780 grams yesterday), gurgling proper baby noises when he's awake. He smiles a lot. He loves it when I go out to cafés because he gets to meet new people. He loves to play. And he loves to gulp all over me and Pappa... hah!

By the way, how is it that something so tiny can belch like a burly truck driver?

Anyway, I'll be writing more in the future...

Here's a photo of the two of us taken when he was 8 weeks one day old :-)