Why Am I Still Fat?

When I was pregnant, I worried about A LOT of stuff. I worried if G would be healthy, I worried if I'd had too much caffeine, I worried about postpartum depression, I worried about pushing a football out of my vagina. (If you're thinking... "A football? Wake up honey!" Then to you I say, Isn't a football enough to worry about?!) I didn't worry about losing the "baby weight". After all, everyone told me that it would "literally melt right off" with breastfeeding. One friend told me she had to have her husband bring her huge brownies every damn day so she could get the calories. I am not making this shit up. But apparently, ALL OF THOSE PEOPLE WERE. WTF.

Now, maybe I shouldn't have believed them. But they were so convincing. And there were so many of them saying the same thing! Why are people perpetuating this lie?! I already wanted to breastfeed, I didn't need convincing! I just thought, "Oh, perfect. I'll have this baby and the baby will just suck all the fat right off of me! Score!"

Well, 16 damn weeks later and guess who hasn't lost anything except sleep and self esteem? That would be me. And since I've been exclusively breastfeeding at least every two hours since the kid was born, I'm thinking there is a flaw in this logic.
 

Seriously, I don't have TIME to try to lose weight. Any and all "free time" that I have right now is devoted to sleep. Exercising is for people with round the clock nannies. And eating healthy? Last I checked I wasn't coordinated enough to eat a salad with one hand, but let me tell you the things you CAN eat with one hand: donuts, chips, donuts, brownies, booze, coffee. Also, occasionally maybe something like spaghetti, but only if someone else cuts it for you first.

Please don't make me work for it. There's still time for this whole breastfeeding thing to work, right? RIGHT?!

The Mommy Cliche

Sleep. I miss it. I want it. Bad.

G has given me so many amazing things in his three and a half- almost four months of life, but sleep has not been included in that list. So if it's cliche and typical to whine about sleep deprivation- so be it. Maybe everybody whines about it because it effing blows. Hard.

When I was pregnant and couldn't sleep because I was the size of a small blimp, I thought I would welcome being up with a new baby. I actually said, OUTLOUD, "At least I'll have a cute baby as the reason I can't sleep." Excuse me?? I want to go back and smack myself. Yes, of course G is beyond freaking adorable, but let me tell you, it's hard to think anything is cute in the middle of the night. And not just the middle of the night, but 16 times before that and 439 times after.

On a good night lately G is up three times. On a bad night, I refuse to count. He's come a long way from when he was a newborn and up for an hour every two hours, but I still pretty much want to gouge my eyes out. I'm thinking about applying coffee topically to see if that helps the dark circles, because drinking it by the gallon certainly isn't doing anything to help!

You know what else doesn't help? Any of those damn "treasure this moment- they won't always need you like this" quotes. That's all well and good- after the fact. I doubt that many of the people writing these beautiful words about their sweet baby gazing lovingly up at them actually have an infant. And I'm sure looking back, I will miss G being so little and so precious, but that doesn't mean I don't just want some freaking sleep.  In reality, being up with an infant twentyhundred times a night feels a little more like this:

Kickin' it Old School

The darling Mrs. PTB makes all things awesome, and wanted to make this blog a little more awesome by passing along this "Old School Blogging" post! Let's get the party started!

1. What were you doing 10 years ago?

Probably things my parents should never find out about.

2.  What are five things on your to-do list?

Convince B to hang the living room shelf, or hang it myself
Clean and organize my closet
Figure out a system for G's clothes
Paint my nails
Stop having the damn flu

3.  What are 5 snacks you enjoy?

Um, only five?! I want ALL the snacks.
Red pepper hummus and Triscuits
Cheddar
Veggies and dip
Brownies
Wine

4.  Name some things you would do if you were a millionaire.

Build a gorgeous house, buy a beach house, be a stay at home mom

5.  Name some places you have traveled.

London, Paris, Barcelona, The Caribbean

6.  Name some bad habits you have.

Scratching my eczema, biting my nails and leaving them wherever, hitting snooze

7.  Name some jobs you have had. 

Cashier, Teacher, Beauty Advisor

8.  Name those you are tagging for Old School Blogging

 I'm tagging my girl Breanna at Counting Blessings- LOVE her!

Salmon "Risotto"

So, I love cooking. Following recipes, however, doesn't exactly work for me. Either I never have all the fancy ingredients or I'm too lazy to churn my own butter or measuring exactly the right amount is just too time consuming. So I just kind of, uh, wing it. B typically loves my creations anyway, so it works for us. Well, at least he says he loves them.

There are two pitfalls to this method, and I'm not sure which is worse. The first (which is probably obvious) is that sometimes what I make turns out disgusting. Like, really bad. The other pitfall is that sometimes it turns out FREAKING AWESOME and I have zero idea what I put in it. Zero. I've been trying to get better about avoiding pitfall #2. Pitfall #1 is just a hazard of being married to me. Sorry, hubs.

I first made this dish a few months ago, on accident of course. I wanted us to start eating healthier- blah. So I thought I'd make a salmon dish with a side of risotto. I've never made risotto before, but being an avid watcher of Chopped, I knew that shit would need more that 30 minutes. Being the innovative chef that I am, I took to Google. While busy googling "risotto easy yum help," I overcooked my salmon. Just a little, but enough that I thought, eh, why not just throw it in my risotto? And that, my friends, is how delicious Salmon Risotto was born.

I found this recipe for "Easy Parmesan 'Risotto'". I liked that is had the word easy right in the title. The Barefoot Contessa's recipe is in gray, but I made some changes.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups Arborio rice (Don't put those fancy words in my mouth! I think I have brown rice?)
5 cups simmering chicken stock, preferably homemade, divided (Some chicken bouillon cubes)
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (Again, some. I didn't have a ton left, and I didn't want to use up the whole green can.)
1/2 cup dry white wine (I'm confused about who has wine leftover for cooking?)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, diced
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 cup frozen peas

A hunk of cream cheese

The salmon you overcooked

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Place the rice and 4 cups of the chicken stock in a Dutch oven, such as Le Creuset. Cover and bake for 45 minutes, until most of the liquid is absorbed and the rice is al dente. Remove from the oven, add the remaining cup of chicken stock, the Parmesan, wine, butter, salt, and pepper, and stir vigorously for 2 to 3 minutes, until the rice is thick and creamy. Add the peas and stir until heated through. Serve hot.

Or, you could be cool like me and just make the rice on the stove in a pot. Once it's cooked, add in the delicious ingredients, and stir it for awhile until it is all hot. Now eat it. You're welcome. 

 

Also, if you actually want to eat something yummy, you could just follow the original recipe- you know, if you're boring like that ;).

The Flu.

You know what sucks about being sick when you are a mom? Well, everything.

The plague known as influenza has hit our house and it has hit HARD. It started with B. He probably brought it home from work, after all, pharmacies are crawling with sickies. B however, has had the man cold for weeks, so I didn't think much of his symptoms. That was my first mistake. By the middle of last week, fever and body aches had us all down for the count. As it turns out though, babies don't care if you are sick. Babies still think you are the most awesome thing on the planet, particularly at 3am when you cannot move except to simultaneously shiver and wipe sweat from your nipples so your baby can latch on without using you as a human slip and slide.

I went to the doctor yesterday, so they could tell me what I already knew. They told me to get some sleep. I made this face.

I know Lindsay, life is pretty rough right now.

Well Hello There

Hi. I'm Em, and I'm going to pretend like I know how to blog. I don't, at all, but I really like to pretend that I'm good at stuff. Like cooking, decorating, running and being a wife and mom. So really, what could it hurt to add blogging to the list?