Now I've Got Three!

Meal Planning & New Roomie

So the diet's been going well.  Back on this day, frustrated with the constant existence of my baby weight, I started a fruit & veggie only diet.  That was intended to be the beginning of my transition towards the Paleo Diet.  I made it a week before I started doing actual research on the principles of Paleo, which taught me I would likely lose weight faster if I went to meat & veggies instead of fruit & veggies.  That sounded much more appealing, especially since I found myself waiting until I fed Isaiah whatever to begin cutting & cooking my dinner & then he never got any of the good stuff. 

Since then I've been pretty successfully doing meat & veggies only & calorie counting.  The only times I found it difficult were when I was at someone else's house and once when I was doing a tasting with one of my catering clients.  The removal of cheese, ranch & corn were pretty devastating.  But I no longer crave them, and I'm not really interested in eating bread or desserts.  I've lost around 10 pounds. 

I've come to the conclusion that I shouldn't really have a cheat day (at least while I'm trying to lose weight) because it tends to counteract whatever I did the previous 2-3 days.  So I've been thinking a lot about the simple math of calories in & calories out.  And the thought of eating what I used to eat & having to exercise to make up for it in order to maintain my weight seems really depressing.  So for now, I will choose to lose weight simply by eating better but mostly by eating less.  Then maybe when I lose most of it, the weather will be nice enought to start walking & then down the line maybe I'll have enough time & money to take the classes I want to take.  Maybe.  I wish.  One day... 

The other struggle I've had recently is getting bored with my default veggies & meat.  Usually I just barely make it to the grocery store & grab a bunch of things that sound good.  And then I end up with a fridge full of chicken, eggs, broccoli, & salad stuff.  Poor Isaiah - that's not good for him.

Plus tonight begins our month long summer with our new roomie - BB.  I knew it was out of the question to have chicken, eggs, broccoli & salad stuff for him.  And rather than keeping that for me & giving my sons frozen mini corn dogs, I opted to make an attempt at meal planning. 

I got several recipes from this website, dedicated to meal planning for the Paleo Diet.  I spent all day today figuring out what to cook for 3 boys of completely different ages & me, creating a grocery list & going grocery shopping.  I'm already overwhelmed.  Mommies, does it get easier?

Breakfast is usually pretty fast here, so I plan to either get the boys to school before they eat breakfast there or cook eggs, sausage, & toast most mornings.  Maybe on the weekend I'll make these Paleo pancakes.  I just got some sandwich meat for lunch because the boys will have lunch at school & Marcus & are seldom around, mostly just eating/tasting food from our events.  Then 2 nights we have events to attend/work.  I blocked off one night in the middle for leftovers.  That leaves me 4 nights of cooking.  And that seems like so much.  I spent $150 at the store.  Again I was overwhelmed.

But then I thought, I am feeding 4.  if we can make it without spending anymore, that's only $21.43 per day.  So I'm doing good!  Plus, as my husband just pointed out, we might have food leftover from catering events.  If that's the case, some of the meat I've planned will stay frozen & they will make it to some meals in week 2. 

Tonight we made a Tacos. BB had meat & tortillas.  Isaiah had mostly tortilla & a little meat. 

And I had meat, avocados, tomatoes, black olives (I ate most of them before I finished cooking) over romaine & red leaf. 

I missed my sour cream & cheese, but it was still delicious, and the boys were happy.  BB asked on the way home if we could have mini corn dogs, but I asked him to try the tacos first.  I guess they were good enough. 

We'll see how the rest of the week goes! 

Isaiah & BB were pleased to know that a bath awaited them after dinner...  Isaiah was cracking up at BB the entire time.  It's delightful to see the development of their relationship.

My Difficult Day with BB

Whenever BB doesn't see us for awhile, he has a very bad attitude.  I don't know if it's just his way of displaying his feelings of confusion & anger about the whole situation or showing that he misses us.  Or maybe he blames us for not coming to see him more often.  I don't know what it is, but it happens every time we go longer than a week without seeing him.  Unfortunately for everyone, that's going to happen all summer long.

For some reason the general custody orders have the summer arranged so that the every Thursday visit disappears.  Marcus & BB's mother have never headed this guideline though because they've always felt like BB shouldn't go a long time without seeing either of them.  Until this year, suddenly she decided to follow that rule.  Of course we didn't know this until we drove an hour to see him, & they weren't there.  When we messaged her & asked where they were, her answer was, is something wrong?

So two weeks have passed since we last saw him.  Last night he went swimming with his dad & brother while I babysat for a friend.  Today Marcus went to run errands near his parents' house, and he left the boys with me. 

Our angry day began when I asked BB to put away the balls he took out earlier.  Isaiah got a bag of 100 plastic balls for his birthday, and every time BB wants to play with them, the deal is that he has to put them all away.  He refused.  But I don't want to.  I reminded him of the deal.  But I don't want to.  I told him that that was fine, but he wouldn't get to play with the iPad if he didn't put them away.  Then he got up & sluggishly began to pick up the balls.  Probably 1 per minute.  Then I gave him a time limit.  When the timer went off, if all the balls weren't put away, then he wouldn't get to play with the iPad for the rest of the day.  He didn't get any faster. 

The timer eventually went off with only about 20 balls in the bag.  So I started putting the balls away.  He stopped.  Then I reminded him that because I was putting the balls away instead of him, that meant no iPad for the rest of the day.  Sulk sulk sulk.  Then it took him about an hour to put on his clothes because he was sulking.  Finally I convinced him that we should get excited about going to look for a present for his daddy & that we could still have a fun day if we all had a good attitude.  

That worked until we got to Dick's Sporting Goods, & the first thing he did was look for a hat for himself.  A shirt that would fit him.  I reminded him that this was a shopping trip for Father's Day so we would be buying things for the fathers not us.  He kept looking for things in the kid's section of the Mav's gear, hoping I would change my mind.  He saw an even bigger kid's section downstairs & asked if we could go down there.  When I said no, he strolled Isaiah to the escalator & started to go down.  I scolded him.  He folded his arms.  But I want to go down there. 

I know BB, but sometimes we don't get what we want.  Today, we're here to get your daddy a present.  Not you.

We went to the golf section, and he ran to the golf bags.  Jewels I want one. 

BB those bags are for golf clubs.  You don't have any golf clubs.

But I want one.

You don't have any clubs to put in it. 

Then he walked to the kids clubs.  Well let's get these then.  Of course I said no.  This time he crawled underneath a golf club display, sat down & put his head in his knees. 

 I tried to explain that our daddy's spend every day of the year taking care of us, buying us things, feeding us, loving us, supporting us & that tomorrow is the one day that we all show them that we are thankful for everything that they do.  So you are going to get up, push your brother around & help me find something that will show your daddy how much we love him. 

He got up, but my speech didn't really work.  Shortly afterwards he crawled back behind some clothes, & I had to tell him that I was going to call his daddy & tell him he needed a spanking when he got home.  That scared him into at least following me instead of crawling into every corner of the store.  I decided on some things, we checked out & left the store. 

On the way home I tried to talk to him about what Jesus teaches about giving & loving one another.  He refused to acknowledge that I was talking.

When we got home, a Lady Gaga song was playing, & he pretended like nothing happened.  We went inside, we chose an animal documentary to watch together, I made him a PB&J, & Isaiah napped. 

When that documentary was over he chose another show.  I said wait we have to decide on one together.  He got really upset again.  But I want to watch Johnny Test!  I repeated that we had to choose something that we would both want to watch.  He started sulking again.  Do you want to choose together or do you want me to choose without you? 

I want to watch Johnny Test.  

Do you want to help me choose? 

No!!! 

So I took the remote away from him & chose something I wanted to watch.  He started throwing things one at a time.  So I told him he needed to go to my room (Isaiah was still asleep in the other) & sit for awhile.  He started crying & screaming no no no, I don't want to!  He wouldn't go on his own so I picked him up & put him on my bed & shut the door. 

He cried for about 20 minutes & then went sleep.

Introducing the Other Brother

Once upon a time, Marcus had another son.  Not BB, another one.  Here he is. 

He is about 17 months old making him 8 months older than Isaiah.  Which means he was born shortly after I got knocked up. 

Marcus & I started dating a few months after he was conceived.  I knew about him before I made the decision to be his girlfriend.  I've never mentioned him on here because it wasn't until he turned one that Marcus told his parents about him. 

We'll call him MB for middle brother.  Because BB says, "I'm the older bruder, Isaiah's the younger bruder & ______ is the middle bruder, right Jewels?"  Yes he is.  And when we take pictures, he will say, "This is half of our family, right Jewels?"  He is very protective of his family.

Now everything is good, well as good as it can be.  I'm sure each of the players have their own issues, but we are all coping with them.  And at least everyone has MB's interest at heart. 

He lives moderately close to Nana & Papa's (my new roomies) so his mom drops him off almost every Sunday.  This past weekend he got to hang out for the whole weekend.

Turns out having a 17 month old, a 9 month old, & a 6 year old (plus the 3 cousins) can be quite the handful.

Marcus & I were exhausted at the end.  And I couldn't even think about working the whole weekend.  So I'm so glad I got the important things done on Friday. 

Saturday night MB couldn't go to sleep, and well, Isaiah isn't the fastest to go down either these days.  So the two brothers played in bed with me & Marcus for a few hours into the night. 

Before that we went to the Bass Pro Shop & I got to show Isaiah the fishies for the first time.

They were both pretty fascinated.  With the fishies & each other.

We tried for a second to get a picture with the boys.  It was not happening.

Isaiah was kindof being a whiny baby.  But I managed to capture some cuteness. 

And he lightened up when I gave him stuff to play with.

That was a good trick.

Snowed In

Oh what a crazy week it's been.  In case I forget years from now, it's been crazy because of this huge ice storm that hit us last Tuesday.  Ice, ice, ice, then snow to cover the ice.  Our events were cancelled Tuesday.  Again Wednesday.  Thursday we were up & running.  Friday shut down again.  Saturday as if to make way for the Superbowl, the snow & ice started melting.  Sunday it was nice.  Monday & Tuesday were almost hot.   And now Wednesday everything is back. 

So we've been home a lot.  A few days Marcus was with us. 

We got some pre-packing done, did some work, and managed to save room for lots of resting & playtime.  It was nice to all be lazy together.  Although for some reason (I think I was stressed about money) I wasn't in the best of moods. 

We missed our time with BB on his birthday Wednesday because the roads were too bad. 

Then Marcus went off on Thursday to the event alone and let Isaiah & I stay home, out of the cold.  That evening we tried to go pick up BB for our Thursday time.  Isaiah really hates being bundled up.

But when we were already an hour late, we weren't even halfway there yet because traffic & roads were so bad.  So we turned around. 

We stopped at Best Buy to get BB his birthday present.  That's another post. 

Friday Marcus was working an event.  I was so afraid to drive on the icy snowy roads - I was really born for different weather.  We thought about waiting until Saturday morning to pick him up, but we had already missed two days, I was determined to get him.  So I enlisted the help of Isaiah's godparents, Marcus's best friend & his wifey.  He & his wifey & their dog, Isaiah, & I all went on a journey to pick BB up.  I was sooooo thankful that he helped because the roads were as scary as I imagined.

We got Wingstop & came back to the apartment to watch the Mavs game. 

You can't see the doggy, but BB is so afraid of dogs, even though this one is an itty bitty cute thing.  Isaiah loves loves loves the doggy.  It was a fun night - we need more of them in our lives. 

We tried to take a few pictures of BB, Isaiah & I.  BB said, "This is our half family right?"

Marcus felt sick all day Saturday.  Can you tell?

Poor little BB caught whatever Marcus had the next day.  Thankfully it was after his little birthday party, which I'll talk about another time.

BB loves his little brother.