weight gain & weight loss

How I gained the weight is obvious. I was pregnant! Super excited of course! During my pregnancy I had gestational diabetes which can be dangerous to the mother and baby if your blood sugar is not controlled. My diabetes was controlled by a restricted diet and an exercise regime. This of course was very annoying because I had to measure all my food and eat constantly to keep my glucose levels steady. And of course I could not have sweets or desserts. But looking back I think that my diabetes may have been a blessing because it helped to control my pregnancy weight gain. Which even with the diabetes diet was about 40 pounds. So all of this to say is I am scared to know what my weight gain would have been had I not controlled my diet and exercised during my pregnancy.

So after sweet baby James was born I lost half the weight in just a couple weeks. Unfortunately my weight loss plateaued there. And I blame this on nursing. For those of you that don't know, I am a huge advocate for nursing. I nursed James for over 13 months. (I am not intending to bash nursing and I in no way regret nursing for as long as I did because the positives far outweigh my temporary fatness). James was a perfect little nurser! (Is the baby or mother the nurser? maybe the the baby is the nursee... I don't know...) But I'm pretty sure that my body went into like starvation mode and every pound I had on my body and every calorie I ate was reserved to make milk for baby. As you can tell from these pictures the nursing was very effective!

So my point to all this is that no matter how healthy I ate and how rigorously I worked out my weight was just stuck. After 13 months of nursing I called it quits and I was able to quite quickly lose my pregnancy weight. This obviously included a healthy diet and lots of running (at least 3 miles a day)! And as of today I have officially lost 30 pounds since I stopped nursing this past summer!

So here are before and after pictures

 Before (Obviously people!)

After (Scooop! Sorry for the DIY pictures---Brian wasn't home so I had to take them) 

But it doesn't stop there! Nothing helps weight loss like a competition! (I love The Biggest Loser, by the way.) Over Christmas, my dad, Brian and I started a competition. We each have to lose 10% of our body weights (from back at Christmas) by my dad's birthday on May 9th. If my dad does not lose 10% or more of his weight he will owe Brian and me two plane tickets. If Brian and I both do not lose 10% or more of our weight then we will owe my dad one plane ticket. So I only have 9 lbs left to go and Brian has 12 lbs. I will post more pictures in May of a sexier Brian and me!

Tackling the Backyard

We have started to tackle our backyard so it's ready to go for the spring and summer. We want it cleaned up and landscaped for James to play and for us to have seating and a fire pit and the like such as (reference to Miss South Carolina 2007).

 This is the before picture. As you can tell its a tiny backyard so we are trying to maximize it's potential. 

And these are the work in progress pictures.

Brian started by grading and leveling the ground and then he poured sand down. Unfortunately the local felines took notice and took it upon themselves to take a part ownership if you catch my drift. I guess soft dirt and sand is hard to come by in Vegas. I think their little paw prints are so cute though. Brian disagrees. 

So the plan is to lay down pavers in the the entire backyard because they are low maintenance and don't have to be watered! After this is part is done will come the fun decorating part. Brian was starting to feel overwhelmed that the project was taking longer than he thought. 

Back to work.

Recently James figured out that chairs are his new best friend and mom's nightmare! He can get into everything including climbing up onto the kitchen counters! Yikes! So when dad was outside he was trying desperately to get out. 

So we gave in and let him out to help.... or maybe just play!

Dad's determined little helper.