Yoga Day 7, Rashes and Feet!

Well what a mess this morning turned out to be. Maddox had a pretty good night, only waking up once around 4 am to feed (unusual for him but hey....it was only once so I'll take it!). He woke up super happy and all giggles. Daddy took him to change his bum and within 5 minutes he erupted in this awful rash!

Poor Maddox appears to be reacting to John's lotion! He had JUST put lotion on himself prior to changing Maddox so that's the culprit for sure. I'm so sad Maddox had to get all rashed up yet again (we've been battling this rash for weeks) but at least now we know what's been causing it and can eliminate the problem. I gave him a bath immediately to wash the lotion off and it seemed to stop it from getting worse.

The rash understandably made him very uncomfortable and he spent most of the day sleeping, on me and in his crib. When he woke up around dinner time the rash was much better and he was in much better spirits. 

Despite the way the morning went he had a milestone today! He found his feet!! 

What the heck are these?! Now if I could only grab one...

Got it! 

Haha babies right? So cute. 

As for yoga, day 7 was pretty easy. It was 30 minutes and the only part I found challenging was the side plank...that's no joke! Here's the one I did today: 

Zucchini Bread!

So zucchini bread is amazing! Like wow...I was so enthralled that I didn't even get any pictures of it but you are just going to have to take my word for it and go make this recipe. Like right now. Drop everything and go. Working? Leave early, go home and make this bread. At a friends? Leave. Leave right this second. Go home and make this bread. Already at home? Good. Now go make this bread right freaking now. I found it on all recipes.com and here it is. Seriously...drop EVERYTHING and make this bread.

Mom's Zucchini Bread

Rated: Submitted By: v monte Photo By: sarah Prep Time: 20 Minutes Cook Time: 1 Hour Ready In: 1 Hour 40 Minutes Servings: 24

"A moist and delicious zucchini bread flavored with walnuts and cinnamon. Easy to bake and freeze, this recipe makes two loaves."

INGREDIENTS:

3 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon baking powder 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon 3 eggs

1 cup vegetable oil 2 1/4 cups white sugar 3 teaspoons vanilla extract 2 cups grated zucchini 1 cup chopped walnuts

DIRECTIONS:

1.	Grease and flour two 8 x 4 inch pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2.	Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl.
3.	Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. Stir in zucchini and nuts until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pans.
4.	Bake for 40 to 60 minutes, or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove bread from pan, and completely cool.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 2015 Allrecipes.com

Printed from Allrecipes.com 2/27/2015

Yoga Day 6: Ow

Well...It's probably a good thing I took the day off yesterday because today was still ow. My stomach muscles were still sore and what did Adriene have me doing? Ab workout. Ouch! This is the practice I did this morning:

Hating you a little bit today lady but also thankful because it did loosen up my core nicely and I'm not as sore any more. It also showed me that my core did indeed suffer from being pregnant which is to be expected.

On the Maddox front last night was actually pretty good. I went to bed at 10:30 because I was still wiped from the night before. Maddox had been asleep since about 9 or 9:30 and he woke up around 12:30 to feed. He was still having pain so I gave him some more tylenol and we just sat and cuddled while it took hold. During this time we tried off and on to nurse but he was just too sore to suck hard enough to make the milk come so was getting frustrated. After about an hour and a half he eventually managed to make the let down happen, fed happily, had a MASSIVE poop and then went back to sleep. He slept through to 8am. :D

Today so far he hasn't had any tylenol or any soreness that I can tell. We will see what tonight brings. 

Teething Hell

So from about 8 pm last night to 2 am M slept maybe an hour total. The poor guy! That second tooth has cut almost all the way through the gums as of this morning but is still very tender! When he did finally fall asleep, off of me, in his bassinet, he slept for maybe an hour and then was up again. I tried to nurse him and he was hurting too much to feed so I took him into his room and gave him some tylenol. We came back to the bedroom and had some good cuddle time. Once the Tylenol kicked in he fell fast asleep and I was able to put him down. He slept from 5-8 am and then woke hungry. I fed him, pulled him into bed with me and we took a 2 hour nap. That was the BEST 2 hours of sleep I had all night.

Luckily today he seems to be in good spirits. Still tender but Tylenol is taking care of it so far.

I had a run scheduled yesterday but with the -20 temperatures I decided it was too damn cold to be out there running. I did the run today instead. It was the same as my last run, 1 km at a 9.47 min/km pace. I think I did the run at an average pace of 8.54 min/km so a little bit faster then I should have. Not going to lie...it was cold so I was hustling a bit to get it done and over with. I had to keep slowing myself down to do it at the pace I was supposed to. A whopping 10 minutes, no warm up, no cool down, just out and back and done. Freaking cold! A part of me is shocked that I can still run that long without a walk break. It has been over 2 years since I was running regularly and I thought for sure after being pregnant last year and getting no exercise that I would be in much worse shape. So far so good!

As for yoga...my stomach and arm muscles are sore so I'm taking a rest day from that. Will pick up day 6 tomorrow. :D

That's all I have for now. Uneventful and yet still exhausting day. Here's hoping for more than 3 hours of sleep tonight.

Laters all.

Second tooth!

Why hello there second tooth! Thank you for finally making your appearance. All you other teeth back off and give my little man a break. #kkthnxbai

Bread and Yoga Day 5

Well that was nice and easy. Super simple day today. Lots of stretching, not much for exertion which is good because I'm still sore from my run on Monday.

So up until recently I figured I was a complete failure at making any kind of yeast dough. It was always just too dry and would not rise properly. After years of failures I figured out that my flour was ancient and I was using too much of it.

Today I tried again, this time with just simple bread. I found a recipe online that was done in the stand mixer and figured great! I can do this!. Well....what a complete disaster....I'm sure the recipe called for easily twice as much flour as it needed...I put in 3/4 of what it called for knowing that I have a tendency to put in too much and it was so much that the dough wouldn't even come together. Just formed in to hard dry turds of yeasty crap. /sigh

Not to be beaten by something as supposedly easy as making bread I trashed the crap I had just made and found a different recipe to try. The one I found called for half the flour of the first one and I decide to forget about the mixer and make it by hand. Oh my goodness we have DOUGH people! Like real, supple, springy, bready bread doughl! Look! It even rose up proper like!!

Holy moly it's working! Dough in the pan pre-rise. It rose up to the top of the pan before I put it in the oven.

WOW IT TASTES EDIBLE! So good! Nothing beats home made bread! John is going to be in for a real treat when he gets home from work tonight!

And I have to include a picture of my sous chef! Go M! His face is all red because he was chewing on a frozen teething ring thinger. You can see it on the edge of the picture. Teething is not fun...fyi.

Yoga Day 4

It has taken me over a week but here it is! I did day 4 tonight! Oh man, you really don't notice how stiff you are until you work on loosening you joints up! I'm incredibly stiff in my hips (understandable after having a baby) as well as my upper back and my left shoulder...just the left one for some strange reason. Haha I also have a curvature in my upper back and tonight I feel like I got some relief from it for the first time in years.

Today's practice focused on all fours which meant lots of table pose and downward facing dog. I did it in my bedroom so I could be close to the little dude if he woke up (he didn't :D) and learned a valuable lesson. If you are going to do yoga on carpet...you still need to use your yoga mat. My palms are on fire with a little bit of rug burn as I type. Oops!

Overall it was a really day 4. Lots of focus on loosening up the back which I really needed. My back is all warm and fuzzy feeling now. :D It feels pretty darn good.

Day 5 tomorrow and Day 2 running tomorrow too. It's another 1 km and this time I will slow down and actually do my target pace properly. haha

Laters,
Ryslan

...darn...

So I was looking at my page stats just now and was like wow! people are actually viewing this and then realized it was tracking my own page views...despite me clicking to NOT track my page views. A quick Google search later and apparently this is a known problem with Blogger? Really? /sigh #hopesdashed #notpopularafterall

Mapo Tofu Take 2!

So the last time I tried to make mapo tofu it was pretty much a disaster. We still ate it, because it was there...but it was nothing like the restaurant version. Tonight I am trying it again. We were going to make it while John's family was here because his mom knows how to make it but we just ran out of time. They will need to come back sometime soon so we can have his mom's version. I made is loosely based on this recipe. I mostly winged it and went by taste as I was making it.

It turned out pretty good! This is roughly what I ended up doing for mine. I hope the measurements are close as I free poured everything. Lol

1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons canola oil
1 1/2 teaspoons sesame oil
1/2 to 1 tablespoon chili oil (adjust to spice level)
4 cloves finely minced garlic
1 inch chunk of finely minced peeled fresh ginger
2 tablespoons black bean paste
1 cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 lb regular or soft (not silken) tofu, drained and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 yellow bell pepper, cut into 1/2 inch chunks
3 tablespoons thinly sliced scallion

Saute the garlic and ginger in the oils until they were fragrant. A few minutes then add the black bean paste and cooked it for a few more minutes. Add the chicken broth and bring it to a boil. Mix the cornstarch with the soy sauce and add that to the pan. Bring it to a simmer, stirring constantly until it thickens. Once the sauce is thickened up some add the tofu and the yellow pepper. Cook at a low simmer, stirring very carefully so as not to break up the tofu. Once the pepper is cooked and the tofu is hot put in the green onions and turn off the heat. Serve over plain rice.

I must say...it turned out pretty good!! Sadly I did not get a picture. I totally didn't even think of it. Oh well...next time. I will be a better blogger I promise! In the mean time...here's a stock photo of what it looked like. 

In other news...the faster pace I ran yesterday has caught up with me today. My stomach muscles are sore as well as my thighs. Tomorrows run I promise to be good and only run the pace I'm actually supposed to run. #runnerproblems

Laters,
Ryslan

First Official Run

So as I may have mentioned my in-law's visited us this past weekend. The visit went really well. Maddox was a doll. Didn't teethe at all and was just a sweet guy the whole time.

Nothing new to report on the Maddox front really except for last nights shenanigans. He went to bed around 8 like normal, slept well until 4 when he woke up to poop. I got up, changed him, and put him back to bed. He, of course, had troubles falling back asleep so I brought him into bed with us hoping he would sleep better (maybe he was cold?). No dice. He snuggles\d right up, smelled milk, and was instantly hungry. So we fed, put him back in his bed and 5 minutes later he pooped again. I got up, changed him and put him back to bed and within 10 minutes he pooped AGAIN! Like how much poop can a 4 month old possibly hold right? Luckily after I changed that one he went right to sleep without an issue but the whole process took almost 2 hours from first wake up to back asleep. Silly baby right?

While the in laws were here my sister in law showed me this training app she uses. It's My Asics and it's pretty neat so far. You put in things like your current fitness level, current distance you can run and you goals and it sets out a running plan for you. I started using it today and I must say I love it so far! My goal was to run 10 km's. Nothing spectacular, just finish the distance. I put that I was basically a non runner because I've been off for 2 years. The app has me running 3 days a week and the program is split into different phases. The current phase is just  conditioning. So basically I go out Mon/Wed/Fri for just a 1 km jog. This is supposed to get my muscles slowly used to working again.

I did the first run today. I was supposed to go 1 km at about a 15:45 min/mile pace which is a slow jog. Not difficult at all. My goal heading out for today's run was to just run the whole 1 km and I managed to! I did mess up my pace though as my running app tells me my average pace which included my walk warm up (oops). So when it told me my pace I thought I was way behind and stepped it up...I ended up running 13:33 min/mile instead. Whoops! Good news is that I was able to maintain that pace fairly easily, bad news is that my stomach muscles are feeling it a bit already. Going to feel that tomorrow...

Now that the family is gone I will be back on track with my yoga starting tomorrow with Day 4. Maddox and I have practically no plans for the next 3 weeks so I hope to get it all done! I sure do feel like I need the yoga these days. As I sit her typing the left side of my upper back that is tingling so I am out of alignment somewhere. Yoga will hopefully set me back straight so I stop pinching nerves and such.

Anyhoo that's all I have for an update this time.

Laters for now
Ryslan

Busy busy.

It has been such a family packed month so far. February 2-9 Maddox and I went up to visit my mom. The visit was great. Maddox teethed off and on the whole week, poor guy. We met my new little cousin and oh man what a sweetie he is!

Last weekend my brother in law and his girlfriend came down for the weekend. It was also a nice visit. We mostly played board games and chatted. They went shopping both days which was great because John had to work on Saturday and it gave us some downtime as a family. 

This weekend coming up my sister in law and mother in law are coming down. It's chinese new year weekend and my mother in law's birthday on the 20th so we figured it would be great to have them down. 

This week so far Maddox is working on his second tooth so he's had a couple rough hours yesterday and today. I can see his gums changing so I'm hopeful that it's going to come soon. It would suck if he were teething this weekend on top of having company over. 

Overall he's not a bad teether compared to others I've heard about. When he's hurting he screams off and on until the tylenol kicks in and during that time I usually manage to get him  back to sleep (cuddle naps!). When he wakes up he's usually happy and as long as I keep dosing him every 4 hours until bedtime afterwards he stays comfortable for the rest of the day. It amounts to him napping on me for hours in the afternoon. 

It was bittersweet when Maddox began sleeping in his crib, I missed the cuddle naps. As long as he's teething though I think I will get my fix. :D 

Anyway that's all I had for an update right now. 

Laters,

Ryslan

30 Days of Yoga Challenge and Crazy Maddox Update

So I figured I should explain the Yoga Challenge I'm doing. Basically I'm so out of shape from spending a year sick and pregnant that I can't get back to running or doing anything overly strenuous yet (when I try my joints protest loudly and quickly!). I found this beginner yoga program to try. 3 days in so far and I'm loving it! I didn't get to do it yesterday but I rode Lily instead so I'm ok with missing that day. Overall I'm not finding it difficult, which is why I decided to go with her's over others I saw. I need to really ease back into exercise and this is perfect so far. I'm already noticing a difference in some of the poses so it must be doing something. Haha

My hope is that the yoga will realign and strengthen my joints to get me to a point where I can start running again. My goal is to be able to run 10k by Maddox's first birthday. I am going to spend a month doing yoga and then start the couch to 10k running program. By then we should have enough daylight in the evenings that I can start my running training after dinner while John is home to watch Maddox. Little man is too small to go in the jogging stroller still. 2 more months to go until he can come with me. 

Enough about exercise, on to the baby news! As I mentioned in the last update Maddox naps off of me really well now and today he went one step better and napped in his crib for the first time in over a month! Basically since we failed at getting him to nap in there the last time. We have John's brother and his girlfriend in town this weekend and while they were here I put Maddox up in his crib with a fluffy blanket for his nap so we wouldn't disturb him. Well wouldn't you know it he fell right asleep without any fuss what so ever and then slept for an hour and a half!! WOW! Like really?! I'm sooo proud of my little man! 

He's currently down for another nap, in the crib again, and fell asleep like a champ. This one was a record for falling asleep on his own. It took him a whopping 6 minutes to go from awake to asleep. All on his own too. I laid him down awake and checked on him when the jabbering stopped and he was asleep. That was half an hour ago. Wow!! Such a proud momma! *Chest swell*

Anyhoo that's all I have, off to do Day 4 of Yoga. :D 

Wow Life Update

So...I had a baby. Yup. I'm a mom. BEST DECISION EVER!!!

Maddox Kai was born on October 14, 2014 at the hefty weight of 8lb 4oz and 18 inches long. The labour and delivery story will come at a later date. :D

Maddox so far has been pretty strong. He had pretty good head control right from the get go and by a month old had almost full control. He giggles, yells, babbles, screeches and cooes. Very talkative little boy we have here. He sleeps through the night most nights anywhere from 8-12 hours and has been since about 3 or 4 weeks old (I think, can't quite remember but it was early). Naps like a champ (this week has been insane for napping!) and is just over all a really easy baby. Could not have asked for a better little guy.

Now that he's almost 4 months old I figured I should pick the blogging back up. Mostly to keep track of milestones for myself. So milestones this week include his first tooth!! and sitting up on his own!!! The tooth came in yesterday (the 11th) and he first sat up tripod style yesterday as well. Long enough that I was able to go to the next room to get my phone to take a picture of him. I'm impressed! He's only 4 months old for crying out loud! Neither of those things generally happen at this age. Way to go Maddox!

Another milestone this week is that Maddox and I have figured out what it takes for him to nap off of me! Woo hoo! I am no longer a baby pillow and can actually get things accomplished while he naps. Today he napped for 2 hours in the morning, a 30 min cat nap in the early afternoon and then another 2 hours in the evening. I can't believe how good he slept. Apparently the trick for him is to cozy him up in a large blanket such that he can bury his face in it. Silly boy makes me nervous sleeping like that but he sleeps like a damn with that face buried. I just stay close by and make sure he's still alive from time to time. I will uncover his face if I notice it's completely covered too but when I look back a few mins later he's got it covered all over again. Silly baby. Whatever gets you napping off of Mommy I'm ok with!

At night he still sleeps in the bassinet in our room. The weight limit on it is 15 lbs and the last time I weighed him at home he was 12.5 so we are getting close! We have a doctors appointment tomorrow so we'll see how much he is now. We are likely going to move his crib into our bedroom even though he's sleeping through the night as I am just not ready to have him that far away yet. Haha

As far as I am concerned, I have not ran in over 2 years. Last year due to a difficult pregnancy (I was very ill for the first half and fairly ill still for the second half) and hte year before due to old injuries constantly cropping up. This year I am determined to run! To help with the old injuries and hopefully keep them at bay I have decided to do a 30 day yoga challenge that I found on YouTube. I've done 3 days so far and I have to say I really like the lady doing it. She's very relaxed about it and stresses to take it easy as we ease into yoga. I really have high hopes for this strengthening my post post-partum body!

Speaking of post-partum! I am 6.5 lbs below my pre-pregnancy weight! Woot! I also am able to wear all my pre-pregnancy clothing! Yay!! The belly is alright, nothing to be shy of that's for sure. Slightly looser skin than before I was preggers and 2 little stretch marks. I can't complain really. If you didn't know me you wouldn't know I had a baby. I feel VERY blessed that my body bounced back so quickly. I lost all the weight within 5 or 6 weeks of giving birth. :D

But anyhoo, that's all I've got for now the typing is threatening to wake Maddox. I'm sure I will think of much more to say in later blogs.

Bye for now.
Ryslan