3-2-1 Blast off!!

I have to say, I'm satisfied with my 24 hours!!!  One day down, 5 weeks and 6 days to go!!

1) Lose 10 pounds - A good start to the weight loss process mostly because I got so distracted writing the blog that I forgot to eat breakfast or lunch!   According to WW, I'm allowed 29 daily points with 40 additional points to be used at any point over the week and it looks like I only used 24.5 total yesterday:
Breakfast: 2 cups of coffee w/skim milk (1 pt)
Lunch: 2 of Ari's granola bars which happened to be in the car (6 pts combined)
Snack: Chicken thigh and wing (7 combined),
Dinner: Falafel with big salad w/baked french fries which were made with PAM spray (2 falafels = 4 pts, sm flour tortilla = 2, hummus, 1.5, veggies = 0, FF = 3)
Snack: Peach (0)

2) Diastasis class - My first class with Kelly Dean went GREAT (www.thetummyteam.com).  I learned a lot about how the muscles interact and what this process will look like over the next 6 weeks.  The way the program works is First: Kelly teaches 2 different excercises meant to work my Transverse Muscles back together and I have to do those excercies several times a day every day.  Second: I am fitted with a splint to squeeze the muscles together so my body will reabsorb the stretched out connective tissue. Lastly Kelly teaches me the proper way to get in & out of bed, pick up the kids, (and even go to the bathroom!) so I can avoid reinjuring the delicate connective tissue. It's interesting to learn how many simple things we do throughout the day will actually damage our muscles if done improperly!  The two things which amazed me the most was how doing these little excercises (only takes about 3 minutes) actually winded me and how simply wearing the splint made me sit up straighter and pull my gut in thereby working the muscles! By the end of the day, I was actually sore :)

3) Exercise - Day 1 was a failure.  I ran around like crazy, but did no actual running.... alas, maybe tomorrow.

4) Get Ari in bed and asleep by 9pm - Success!!!!  kind of....  Ari was in the bath at 8:30 on the dot and in bed with the lights off by 9pm.  Ari did his very best to extend bedtime first requesting juice, then a book, then announcing his hunger, having to go potty, then getting out of bed to sneek into our room (luckily only once), just crying for "DAAAADDYYYY!!!!," then lying in bed asking to come into our bed until he finally fell asleep around 10pm. It was heartbreaking to hear his cries and at one point I literally had to threaten my husband to keep him out of Ari's room, but in the end he went to sleep.  Now the hard part is to keep up the consistency for tonight, tomorrow and every day after until he gets the idea.

5) Get Lilah to FINALLY sleep through the night - This was tough.  Lilah woke up at 11:35 and absolutely threw a tantrum when I told her it was "night night time and everyone else is sleeping and you should be too!"  Once again I had to threaten my husband with bodily harm to keep him from scooping her up and pulling her into bed with us.  BUT... after only 25 minutes (and two checks), she fell back to sleep at midnight :)  She probably would have continued sleeping soundly if her crazy mother hadn't gone in to check on her at 3:30 and accidently woken her up :(  I nursed her for about 15 minutes and she went back to sleep until 6am when she woke bright eyed and ready for the day.  The main goal will be for her to sleep from 12 hours - from 7:30pm to 7:30am. I think tonight I will make the rule that I will not nurse her until 3am and then I will ignore her in her crib until 6:30am. 

6) Wean Lilah - Kelly Dean's office is in the Sante Mama building in Vancouver, WA (http://www.santemama.com/).  I happened to be just leaving Kelly when a "Drop In Lactation Support Group" was starting in the office down the hall, so I decided to "drop in" and ask their Lactation Consultants about strategies for weaning.  The plan we came up with is to nurse 5 times a day on a schedule, then removing one feeding per week - which of course works perfectly into the time frame of my little mission!!!  So yesterday ended up being a wash, but I today I will start tracking when she nurses.  I think for this week, nursing first thing in the morning, before 1st nap, before 2nd nap, before bed and once in the night will be my goal.  Hopefully by next week, we will take away the middle of the night feeding :)