Happy Birthday Sweet Caroline!!

My baby girl is a year old today! I can't believe it. This has been one of the best years of my life because of her. I look forward to this next year of getting to know each other more.

McFatty Monday..Week 12

I'm in training all week and won't have computer access so I'm posting before work today. I'm still going strong and the comments are starting to really pick up about my weight loss. Everyone keeps asking what diet I'm on and I tell them that I'm not on a diet, I'm just making healthy choices, eating smaller portions, and being active.

It's definitely paying off. Check out my numbers for this week.

Current weight: 209.8
Weight loss this week: 4 pounds
Total weight loss so far: 33.9 pounds

Birthday Party!!

We had Caroline's birthday party yesterday and it was a lot of fun! The weather was beautiful so we all spent a lot of time outside. We had a great time. I cannot believe her first birthday party is over and she will be a year old on Wednesday!!

Here are the pictures.

The cake was awesome. We ordered it from The Sweet Stuff and she matched it perfectly to the theme.

She fell asleep right when the party was starting

She wanted to cling to me most of the day



She finally cheered up when we went outside

She smashed her cake on the front porch



Then we went inside to open presents

And practice walking

5 Question Friday..

I saw this on a blog I read and decided to do it this week. Let's see if I can make it a weekly habit.

1. Did you pass your driver's test on the first try?

Yep, on my 16th birthday too. I do not like to fail at things and I made sure I had everything down when I went.

2. What is your most embarrassing moment?

Hmm..I played soccer in high  school and we were running around the track to warm up. The boys team was on the field and I had a crush on a guy on the team. I was trying to be cool and get his attention so I started running backwards, hoping we would make eye contact. We did, but it was right as I tripped over a hurdle and fell on my butt.

I'm sure some of my friends might have better stories of embarrassing moments for me but this was all I could think of off the top of my head.

3. What TV show would you like to be on- Oprah, Biggest Loser, or What Not to Wear?

Biggest Loser! I want to lose weight and I love competition..enough said.

4. Would you ever get plastic surgery and what kind?

Sure, if I could afford it, but not until after I'm finished having kids. I'd get a breast lift, tummy tuck, and veneers on my teeth...maybe some lipo.

5. What are your favorite jeans to wear?

When you are trying to lose weight, jeans are not your friend..especially when you still have a belly pooch that the jeans have to button right in the middle of. It's hard to find jeans that don't give me a muffin top. I used to only own low rise jeans but those look horrible on me right now.

Currently I only own 2 pairs that "fit" (they're both getting pretty loose..yay!). I have a pair from Target..I think they're Meronas..and a pair from the Gap Outlet..I can't remember which kind.

51 Weeks!!

Caroline is 51 weeks old today, which means next week she will be a year old!! Wow. She took her first steps yesterday after I picked her up from daycare. I put her on the ground in the kitchen and she didn't want to sit, she wanted to stand. I let go and backed up and she took 4 steps into my arms. I got her to do it a few more times but she didn't want to do it anymore by the time Mario got there..she just wanted to crawl. She was so steady and acted like it was no big deal..she'll be running around before we know it!

She's getting tubes on Thursday and we have to be there at 6am. The surgery's at 7am. I hope everything goes smoothly and that she's not in pain afterward. I've heard from lots of other moms that she will be back to normal in no time, which I hope is true for her because her birthday party is two days later.

Everything is pretty much ready to go for her party. We just have to decorate and pick up the food and cake. Hopefully everything goes smoothly and she's in a good mood!

Here are some pictures from the past few weeks.

We bought her a cozy coupe for her birthday (a few weeks early) we suck at waiting..haha.

We went to San Antonio for her cousin's birthday.

Her cousin Diego gave her his old mailbox.

We went to the Austin Kite Festival a few weekends ago.

She's learned how to climb onto things.

She loves to steal clean dishes out of the dish washer.

McFatty Monday..week 11

Still going strong and still losing weight. Honestly, this is a lot easier than I thought it would be. I can definitely say that I have made a lifestyle change and I don't miss my old lifestyle nearly as much as I thought I would. I definitely took a while to get to this place.

They opened a McDonald's down the street from us and I decided to check out their website to see if they had any decent meals that weren't 1000 calories. I found out that a 6 piece nugget with BBQ sauce and either apple dippers or a side salad with low fat italian dressing and a diet coke is fewer calories than a 6 inch sub with cheese and baked chips at Subway. Not bad..and I love chicken nuggets. I'm not going to eat there every day but it's nice to have an option that isn't too bad.

I did the Wii Active once last week and walked outside every other day. I'm planning on walking this week too because the weather's supposed to be nice.

I'm 0.8 pounds away from my goal of 213 by Caroline's birthday (3/31) looks like I'll make that. My next goal is 200..my pre-pregnancy weight (finally). I'll set a goal of May 1st for that.

I packed away all of my 18 pants yesterday and a bunch of shirts that were too big. I went through my old (smaller) clothes and was able to move a bunch of shirts back into my closet. I found 1 pair of 16 pants that fit. All my other pants are 14s, 12s, and 10s...I will fit into them!!!

Current weight: 213.8
Weight loss this week: 2.6 pounds
Total weight loss so far: 29.9 pounds..wow, so close to 30!!

3 Years!!

Three years ago today I married my wonderful husband!! It's been a great three years and I'm looking forward to what's in store for us over the next 30+ years.

Here are some pictures from our wedding.

McFatty Monday..week 10

Wow, I can't believe it's already been 10 weeks and I can't believe it's only been 10 weeks. I'm definitely in the zone with the eating thing. I still have to force myself to work out. The weather was so nice all last week that I decided to walk the dog around the neighborhood instead of doing the Wii workouts. It's hard work walking a 105lb dog up and down hills!

I cheated this weekend and had a margarita. We went to a Mexican restaurant for our niece's birthday and I ordered the same thing that I ordered last time (it was the same restaurant)..the personal shrimp fajitas with corn tortillas and guacamole. I didn't have any cheese, sour cream, or refried beans. I woke up yesterday morning and my fingers were swollen.

We went to the kite festival in Austin yesterday and parked what felt like a million miles away so I got in some exercise.

Current weight: 216.4
Weight loss this week: 2 pounds
Total weight loss so far: 27.3 pounds

McFatty Monday..week 9

I'm still going strong with the eating but I only worked out three times last week because I have a cold and either couldn't breath out of my nose or couldn't stop coughing. I still lost weight though, which further proves that for me, it's mostly about the eating.

We went to Texas Roadhouse with my parents on Friday and I tried to plan ahead but couldn't find any nutrition information anywhere, which probably isn't a good sign. I ended up going with the 6oz. sirloin, mixed veggies, and green beans. I didn't eat any of the rolls or peanuts. That is a big step for me!

I'm down to 218.4. I hope to get down to 213 by Caroline's birthday on the 31st. That was my weight at my first OB appointment. I can definitely do it.

Current weight: 218.4
Weight loss this week: 3.2 pounds
Total weight loss so far: 25.3 pounds

Show Us Your Life

I just started reading a blog called Kelly's Corner and she does a thing called Show Us Your Life. The schedule can be found on the right sidebar of this page. I've decided to join in and the topic for today is your typical day..here's mine:

5:35am: Alarm goes off and I hit the snooze button.
5:40 am: Alarm goes off and I get up, pee, weigh myself, wash my hands, brush my teeth, and make a cup of coffee.
5:45 am: I drink my coffee while I put on my makeup and blow dry and straighten my hair.
6:10 am: Get dressed then get my stuff and Caroline's stuff ready to grab on the way out the door.
6:15 am: Wake Caroline up and take her to her room to change her (she sleeps in our bed). Change her diaper and clothes and brush her teeth.
6:25 am: Take Caroline to the kitchen to finish getting her ready. She sits in the Bumbo on the kitchen counter while I put her shoes and socks on, fix her hair, and put her jacket on.
6:35 am: I put her in the car seat in the car (in the garage) then grab our stuff and set the alarm.
6:40 am: Drop Caroline off at daycare and head to work.
7:15-7:40 am: Get to work, start up my computer and make breakfast.
10:00 am: Eat my morning snack.
12-1 pm: Eat lunch and surf the web.
3 pm: Eat my afternoon snack.
4:30 pm: Leave work.
5:05-5:15 pm: Pick Caroline up from daycare and head home.
5:30 pm: Play in the study with Caroline and Jake until Mario gets home.
5:30-6 pm: Mario gets home and entertains Caroline while I make dinner.
6-6:30 pm: Eat dinner.
6:45 pm: Workout while Mario watches Caroline and cleans the kitchen and living room.
7:30 pm: Play with Caroline or hold her while she naps while Mario works out.
8:15 pm: Make lunches, pack bags, and iron clothes for the next day while Mario bathes Caroline and rocks her to sleep.
9 pm: Shower and watch while Caroline sleeps on one of us.
10 pm: We all get in bed.

That's it. We stick to a pretty standard schedule Monday-Friday. On the weekends we're usually out and about but we clean the house on Saturday morning and all laundry and grocery shopping is done on Sunday.

I would love to see what everyone else's daily schedule is like!

11 Months!!

At the end of this month I will have a 1 year old! Wow. We pretty much have everything ready for Caroline's birthday party. Her birthday falls on a Wednesday and we're doing the party the weekend before because the weekend after is Easter. We're doing a cupcake theme and we ordered her decorations from here. They came in last week and I am very impressed with the quality! We're going to take Caroline to Picture People this weekend to have some 1st birthday pictures done. I totally dropped the ball on booking someone to do pictures for us. I hope these turn out okay.

I realized that I never did an update on the ENT appointment. There wasn't much to say because she didn't get to see the doctor the first time we went. I had to stop by my office to pick up my laptop before the appointment and I should have allotted more time for that. We ended up showing up almost 20 minutes late and the doctor couldn't see us. :( We rescheduled with another office that is much closer to us and the appointment was this morning. We found out that she has yet another ear infection and she's going to need tubes. Her surgery is scheduled for March 26th, the day before her birthday party. Her doctor assured me that she would be fine for her party.

Let's see, what's new with Caroline?

• She's a sippy cup pro now. It only took a week in the 12-18 month room at daycare for her to figure it out. I was all stressed out over it for nothing. We have been giving her her bottles in it and the transition has been seamless. 
• She's "talking" more..I don't know what she's trying to say but she babbles away..I do recognize "uh-oh."
• It's harder to go out to eat with her..she makes a huge mess so we have to stick to more casual places. She also gets tired of sitting in the high chair after a while.
• She has been pretty moody lately..if she doesn't get what she wants, she will scream..and she's loud!
• She's so fun and has so much personality. She dances all the time and mimics things that we do and faces we make.
• She has two molars trying to break through and those are causing her a lot of pain. She chews on everything she can.
• She's all about pushing buttons..she turns the TV, stereo, cable box, and DVD player on and off. We're on the lookout for a new entertainment center that has those things enclosed..unfortunately we're limited on the size because of our fireplace.

Now for the pictures...

I finally got a picture of her standing on her own..she only does it for short periods

McFatty Monday..Week 8

Okay, here we go. Here's the history of my weight struggles...I've never been a tiny person. I'm 5'8" and I was a size 10 in high school. When I got to college, I gained the Freshman 50 (at least)! I started eating healthy and exercising my Sophomore year and lost some weight. Then I met my future husband. We both gained quite a bit of weight after we had been together for a few years. We were partying with friends 5 nights a week and eating out all the time. Before I knew it, I was 238 pounds! (I can't find any pictures on this computer of me at this weight)

I wasn't much smaller than that when we got engaged in 2006. I got serious about losing weight for the wedding and I used Sparkpeople to get down to about 185.

I got right back on track after the honeymoon and got down to about 175.

After a year of marriage, I was right around 185-190.

After the first year, we started talking about starting a family and I stopped eating as healthy and pretty much stopped exercising all together because I had the mindset that I was going to get pregnant anyway so it didn't matter (big mistake). By the time I got pregnant I was around 200.

This was taken a week before I got pregnant.













At my first appointment (at 6 weeks) my doctor's scale said 213.

This was on my birthday at about 4 weeks.

I gained SO much weight during my pregnancy. I felt sick during the first tri but never threw up and it seemed the only thing that would make me feel better was to eat..so I did. I continued to eat whatever I wanted through the rest of the pregnancy and my weight kept climbing. I think a combo of me not watching what I ate and the fact that my mom gained a lot of weight during her pregnancies (almost 100 pounds when she was pregnant with me..of course she started at 99 pounds) led to me getting HUGE!

The last time I looked at the scale at the doctor's office I was 285..and I delivered 3 weeks early!!! I kept bringing my weight up at my appointments but my OB wasn't concerned and said I would just have to work hard after the baby was born. I didn't take many pictures while I was pregnant and definitely didn't do any maternity pictures.

I really didn't do much to lose weight after Caroline was born. I was so busy taking care of her, then going back to work, that I kept making excuses to not do anything about how huge I was.I got down to about 260 pretty quickly after she was born but then I got stuck. I was kind of hoping the weight would just fall off but it wasn't.

Right around Thanksgiving, when Caroline was almost 8 months old, we had some professional pictures taken. Seeing these pictures is what really got me motivated to do something about this weight. I was about 250 at the time.


We bought a Wii and I got down to 243.7 by the end of the year. January 4th is when I started with the healthy eating and exercise full time. So far, I have lost 22.1 pounds and I weighed 221.6 this morning. Unfortunately I don't have any recent pictures to show you my progress but I have gone from a 20 to an 18, and now a 16. I have a whole wardrobe in 12-14 and I'm looking forward to wearing those clothes again.

There you have it, the story of my weight. It feels good to get the numbers out there. I'm hoping it will make me more accountable.

Weight loss this week: 0.6 pounds
Total weight loss so far: 22.1 pounds