Weight Loss

As several of you may have seen, via my Facebook post, Ryan Davis died a couple of months ago. There's no reason any of you should know him, he was a 'web personality' at one of my favorite Video Game websites. He was a riot to listen to and a great writer. He died five days after he got married. He was also fat. You can find pictures if you want, but let's not beat around the bush here; there's not a whole lot of guessing about what killed him. After I read about Ryan dying, I walked into the bathroom and weighed myself. I was 236 pounds. That might be the most I've ever weighed. It was right after the 4^th of July weekend, so it may have been a little skewed by recent munchitude, but 236 was too much.

The next day I started doing something I didn't think I'd ever do: count calories.

I got on a website called MyFitnessPal, put it my weight, guessed at a goal weight and, started trying to keep my caloric intake under the goal number for the day (roughly 2000). As it turns out, calories can sneak in via some pretty circuitous routes. My trail mix? Lots of calories in there. I only ate 5 fig newtons a day, for my daily 'lunch-dessert', but considering the low number I was trying to hit, that had to hit the highway. PB&J after Tyler goes to bed? Nearly 400 calories by my estimation, and that's just too much. I've gotten down to small dinners, carefully measured lunches, and...pretty much the same breakfast I've been eating for years, so that was okay. I might try and throw some more eggs in there, though. They seem like good breakfast fare.

It's made me really reconsider what I want to eat. When you start limiting yourself like this you start to really think about where you want your calories to come from, and when you want to eat them. Especially, too, when you make yourself exercise, and you start to see how much effort it is just to burn off a few hundred calories. Did you know I don't even get to eat fruit whenever I want anymore? Too much energy in most fruit. I can eat veggies at will, but let's be honest, Tyler is right: veggies are pretty gross.

It's a lot of effort, and I never thought I'd spend this much time thinking about what I eat, scrutinizing every meal. I'm not tracking calories every day anymore, I tend to estimate just to keep my sanity, but a couple of times a week I try to keep a solid count, just to keep myself honest.

Oh, and last time I checked, I was at 224 and dropping. So the effort is paying off. I'm just hoping I can keep this up, you know, forever.

Tyler. Is. Wearing. Underwear. Holy crap! This is big news, people, stop whatever you're doing. Well, okay, technically, now he's wearing diapers, because he's asleep and we're not crazy, but we started him on saturday and kept him in underwear most of the weekend. He did pretty well, though we have to lead him periodically to the bathroom, and he won't think of it on his own yet. #2 is also pretty tricky, but it's a work in progress. The point is that we've taken a big step, here, people. One that is going to involve a lot of extra laundry for a while. But if you recall, we had him in cloth diapers for many, many months, so super-gross laundry is nothing new to us.

Today was his first day back at school with underwear. He was a little bummed out when he realized that his pants obscured his totally sweet Lighting McQueen underwear, but for the most part he did pretty good today. It'll be a work in process (and don't be surprised if we totally wuss out for the New York Trip) but the little guy is growing up. Apologies to whichever family members' floor he pees on first. I figure it's only a matter of time.

Tyler is also starting to have full conversations, though for some reason he likes it better when he has a toy and you have a toy and your toy asks his toy what his toy did during the school day. Too modest, otherwise, I suppose. He also is putting together some pretty elaborate play scenarios. On Sunday he got his luggage, some luggage for daddy (a pumpkin bucket) some luggage for mommy (a purse) and then we went to the airport (kitchen) and sat in the airplane (floor) and went to new york. He walked over to the museum (Office) and saw the Dinosaur (actual Toy Dinosaur, I was impressed) and then we looked up and saw the big Blue Whale (ceiling). It was too high up to touch. We checked. And then, after all of that, we went back on the plane, flew back to Texas, and then said hello to the kitties when we got back to the house. Then he did our tax returns!

Micro-News!

Tyler has been taking swim lessons. Next week is his last class and I am coming to watch and see how good Tyler is now.

Tyler is starting to learn numbers and sounds. He'll be writing novellas before you know it.

Till next time, everyone,

-N

Maybe he should get a Certificate

So anyone who has seen the little tyke on Skype knows that Tyler is very much a toddler. I can think of no better noun to describe that happy little walk he does. He has, unfortunately, been stuck in the baby program at Day Care for too long, however, being as they are trying to organize a lot of kids moving around at the same time that the building is getting remodeled. Well we took it to the highest authority (and asked nicely) and today we got the news that Tyler will be moving up to the Toddler classroom at the beginning of next month. Even cooler, he gets to move in with Ben, one of his current friends from his current classroom and he gets to re-unite with August, one of his friends that moved up to toddlers many months ago. He also lives a little bit down the street from us. So that's exciting.

Jess and I also got to play hookey from school today to watch one of the great rituals of summer in a Texas day care: Splash time! They actually have a neat little area in one of the playgrounds that has a gentle slope that fills with an inch or two of water, and the whole thing is surrounded by sprinklers! Jess and I sent Tyler to school with swim diapers and his swim gear, and went over to see how he would fare.

Tyler's baby group got to head over with the Toddlers (see, they know) and the whole group, most of whom hadn't done this before, broke down into three sections. One group ran right into the middle, splashing and having a great time. One group stood around the edge of the pool staring and occasionally getting hit by the sprinklers, but not really joining in the party. And another group stood off to the side and cried like crazy. Tyler was, of course, in the adventure group. We got more than a few pictures of him running around and kicking up his splashy feet. It was really cute to watch.

So now that Tyler is getting older, and maybe also now that he has tubes in his ears and can hear us better, he's starting to take the first, halting steps towards 'mastering' the English language. Which is kind of a bummer because let's face it, English is a mess. I wish I had a better language to teach him. Is it to late to bring back Esperanto? Anyway, for your edification, I have attached Tyler's first dictionary. It's not organized Alphabetically because Tyler doesn't know what an alphabet is yet.

Ba-Ba: 1) Bottle (if said around 6:30 PM)

2. Bye-bye (all other times)

Da-Da: 1)Daddy

2. Look at that!
3. Mommy
4. I want that thing

Ma-Ma: 1) Mommy

Buta-Bita-Bita: 1) Blanket

Doo! 1) Shoes! Put them on me and let's go outside to play.

Git: 1) Cat!

[Standing near something and lifting up one leg while making grunting noises] 1) I want to go up here.

Ah! Oooooh. Ah! Oooooh. 1) Nothing, but he likes to parrot mommy and daddy when we make that sound at him.

[Crying] 1) What's wrong with you, why don't you understand my perfectly enunciated English? Give me what I want!

Jess is off at ice hockey, the first game of the summer season on her new team the Peter North Stars. If you get the joke behind that name, don't tell anyone else, lest they figure out too much about you. I'm hoping her game goes well and she has a nice time. I'm also hoping I get some sweet loot drops as I'm going to go play some Diablo 3 while I have the house to myself.

-N

The Case of the Amazing Baby

We've had a few wow moments with Tyler over the past few weeks. For starters, he's started doing crazy stuff when he's on his stomach. He's been able to lift his head for a while, and he's been getting up on his knees and rocking back and forth a lot, which is a pretty normal thing for babies getting ready for crawling, but he's started to get up on all fours and then get up his toes. And then sort of flail his feet around so he's sort of half almost crawling and kinda walking on his toes except his hands never move. He's clearly excited to get moving, but he hasn't yet figured out that the hands need to be involved. Regardless, he's getting a heck of an upper-body workout. More and more of that baby budge is starting to turn into baby muscle!

He's starting to work on his little 'pincer motion' too, where he uses his finger and thumb for delicate tasks. It's clearly a work in progress, but he likes looking at fiddly things and he gets really focused and quiet and goes to work. The thumb and finger still have some coordination to work out between the two but it's really fascinating to watch him work. I caught a glimpse of my future son while he was working with a cute, concentrated face. For some reason I could see a shadow of how he's going to look when he's older. I got a bit of a chill.

We went swimming today, too. Well...it's still not that much swimming, truth be told. He has more fun in the tub. The pool is so new and strange that he spends most of his time, near as I can tell, just trying to figure out where the heck he is. We got some splashy time out of him, but the water was pretty cold, and it isn't a really good idea to keep him out in the sun much, even though we do make him wear a hat and a shirt. Delicate baby skin, you know.

Oh, and I got to take him swimming because I got to stay home today. I took a day off because Aunt Sandlin and Uncle Matt are visiting this week. Tyler has gotten a lot of Aunt time, especially around his cheek area. Matt has gotten to hold him and feed him a few times, too. They're going to spoil that kid rotten, I'm sure.

Tyler has been, as reported, working on Carrots this week. He's getting better, but he's still not a huge fan. Those first few bites are still really rough. We balance it out with some rice or oats, nice and familiar, and eventually he gets into the swing of things. It's way messier, though. We've got peas and sweet potatoes to try next. I imagine it will be much the same story as the carrots. Huge mess, scrunchy face, really cute.

As for me, I've been playing some video games in my spare time, but I think I need to get back into the studio to make some more music. There's a few more songs from Actraiser I'd like to cover, and someone made the excellent suggestion of writing a theme song for our work. I'm thinking of making it a little bit like the old Mickey Mouse Club theme. Very upbeat and saccharine. That could be a fun project.

Jess and I are both slacking on exercise a bit. Jess has a better excuse in that her normal Derby stuff has been interrupted by places loosing their rink time and other valid excuses. I was sick last week, but I missed Judo this week because Sandlin and Jessie told Tyler to be cute so I could stay home. He did, and so I did too. And I ended up making Ice cream too. Came out great, especially with strawberries. Yum.

Sandlin has been spoiling us with food. She made us Carnitas yesterday with so many fixins you'd think we were at a restaurant. Jess says she likes Sandlin's cooking better now. So I'll just have to make sure I fix that quite promptly...somehow. There were Kebabs, too. I grilled them with some corn that came out very well. She's also made us some chicken stock that she also turned into Chicken and Orzo soup, and Chilli, and a few other things too. She's a machine in the kitchen. She bought us some smoked salt that seems really good, but you have to store it extra-tight or it makes the whole pantry smell like a BBQ.

Jess gets back from work soon and then we're going to get some burgers with friends of Sandlin's that live in Austin. More people to meet! Oh, that reminds me. Some neighbors around the corner are either moving in or moving out. Either way, we'll probably have some new neighbors to meet quite soon.

-N

Tyler: Week Something

We've gotten a lot better at getting Tyler to laugh. One of his favorite jokes is for us to make silly noises. It's pretty much the only joke we've been able to tell him so far, but he hasn't gotten tired of it yet. He's also getting much stronger, though still in tiny increments. He's briefly been able to pull himself up into crawling position, which means I need to get on this whole 'babyproof the house' thing without too much delay. This may require significant changes to the entertainment center and cable management in general. We have a lot of power cords around here. (Power Chords?)

He gets really excited when he wants to stand up, too. He arches his back and flexes his tiny little ab muscles. Then I give him both my thumbs and tell him to pull and he pulls himself up. So two thumbs up is currently baby sign language for 'go ahead and stand up'. He is a world champion sleeper, too. He's gotten so good that as soon as he recognizes that he's in his room, he doesn't even want to be rocked anymore. He just wants to get put in his crib so he can get down to the important job of sleeping all night. What a great baby.

This weekend we took him out to his first time at the swimming pool. It was the smallest “time spent at pool” to “required effort before and after” in the history of mankind. We had to assemble all the stuff, and there was rather a lot of it, and then eat some food because we were hungry, and then we walked to the pool. Once there we got Tyler in his cute little swimming gear and just tooled around in the wading pool. He didn't play too much, but he enjoyed the scenery if nothing else. And we got some really cute pictures. Jess said he was done after only about half an hour or an hour at the pool, and I thought she was being silly until I saw his little farmers tan later in the afternoon. Too much more sun and he would have been pushing sunburn territory, so I'm glad Jess insisted on heading home when we did. Though afterwords we had to hang up all the towels and swimsuits, so there was definitely a lot of effort all around.

I've gone into the last two weekends with the intent of trying to write some music, but so far nothing has come of it. I'm trying to think of a way to concoct an entire idea for a song before I get too deep into the writing and burn myself out on any one particular sound. I've tried visualizing some ideas, but so far nothing has stuck. If I figured out a better method and manage to create something, you all will be the first to know.

-N

Wing Tsun

Jess and I just got back from Wing Tsun (remember when she used to be J(5)?) and that class is a lot of fun, let me tell you. We've started learning some exercises we can do around the house. Some alone, and some with each other.

I'm definitely enjoying the sense of re-learning and slowly uncovering all the hidden depths that you start to see when you learn a martial art. That sense that you've started swimming and you can just feel the water below you getting deeper and deeper. Learning that depth is one of my favorite things about martial arts. And the fact that Wing Tsun is making me want to exercise my arms to get better is an indication of how much I like it.

In other exercising news, Jess and I have joined a 24 hour fitness gym near our house. It's pretty big, and it's got a smallish, but long enough, pool where we've been going swiming at lunch. It's good to get back into that daily fitness routine, it's good for my overall health and keeps me awake during the day.

It's also got a heck of a lot of different ways to exercise, so if we ever feel like hitting up the weight machines or dumbells or joining a Yoga class, we can just walk right in. The freedom is a nice touch.

Fitfully yours,

-N