It's Been Too Long!!!

I have started going to the gym to work out with a friend. We have just finished our third week of going every Monday through Thursday. It is very invigorating, and I love the energy boost I get. It must be all of those endorphins working. I don't even need caffiene anymore! And I have been eating less, most of the time, I'm not sure why. It's not because I don't want the food, it's more that I realize now when I am full and can push my plate away and not finish every single bite. Now I just need to work on not putting as much on my plate to begin with. I still feel like I should clean my plate, and that is not conducive to losing weight when you still take star-quarterback-of-the-football-team-size portions. So portion control is the next thing I will work on, now that it is a habit to wake up four days out of the week and get ready for the gym automatically. And then perhaps I'll tackle the actual foods I am ingesting. Many of which are somewhat less than nutritious. I am eating more fresh fruits and vegetables than ever before, which is a good start, but my intake of processed foods and fast food leaves something to be desired. Like a tummy tuck.

Griffin is three now, I can't believe it! I'll post pictures from his party here sometime. Our laptop is on the fritz, and I don't think it can be repaired, and that is where I did all of my picture-posting. This computer is old and antiquated, and picture-posting is very time-consuming and difficult on it. So for now, I just get to blabber away and fill this void with my words of wit and wisdom.

So anyway, back to Griffin. He is talking ever so much lately, and can hold his own in a conversation with any adult. Especially if said conversation pertains to Thomas the Train, Caillou, Bob the Builder, sandboxes, dump trucks, excavators, rollers, cranes... you get the drift. He will also talk to anyone who asks about fire trucks, sirens, and flashing lights. Another fascination of his.

Sammy is becoming quite the little talker too. He loves balls, and any time he sees anything remotely resembling a round object, he yells -- at the top of his lungs, mind you -- "BAH!!!!!" and points his little finger at the object of his desire. This is especially fun for him if we are in a multi-level parking garage (echo factor), a mall with a big open area and several floors (echo factor with more people watching), a library (Mommy reaction factor), a bookstore (Mommy reaction factor Number Two), need I say more? He also loves the "Kee-ee!" (kitty) and the "Chit-choo" (train). When he wants down from any place he needs help getting down from, it is "A-wahnt-dahw," and he uses that liberally anytime we place him into that torturous device, the restaurant high chair. Or the one at home, but at least he actually eats something before proclaming his "A-wahnt-dahw" when we are at home. Yeah. We don't eat out much at restaurants. We're drive-through kind of people.

I've been keeping up with laundry quite well for the last month or so. I got tired of not being able to put together a decent outfit. I know I have plently of clothes, they were just always buried in the laundry chute. I think my problem lay in the fact that I wasn't folding the clothes as soon as they came out of the dryer. I'd take them out of the dryer, pile them into a laundry basket, and set the laundry basket outside of the bathroom door (where the washer and dryer are, the guest bathroom on the main floor of the house -- what genius thought that up? I have about two square feet of standing room while I transfer clothes from washer to dryer. But hey, at least I HAVE a dryer. So I can't complain too much.). Then, after the laundry had been tossed out of the basket for the fiftieth time that day (by my two little laundry-helpers), strewn all over the floor, piled back into the basket, strewn all over the floor again, thrown back into the basket, frantically hauled upstairs, and thrown on the bed in the master bedroom, it would get smaller and smaller (if I wasn't adding new loads of wrinkled recently-washed clothes to it) day after day as I picked out what I wanted to wear from the pile. Eventually, my two little laundry-helpers would take whatever was left from the dog-hair-covered (the dog sleeps on the floor of our bedroom, hence everything that touches the floor gets at least one dog hair stuck to it) pile of clothes and would, being the helpful little creatures that they are, lovingly -- no, scratch that, gleefully -- throw it down the laundry chute for me to wash again. I find the most interesting things in the laundry chute. I should make a list over the course of a week, that could be a blog all on its own.

Mike has been working hard stripping wallpaper from the master bedroom and bathroom and the loft upstairs. There were two layers of wallpaper in the loft, so that was tedious to remove. The bedroom was easy in comparison, with just a border at the top that wasn't glued down very well. It actually looked as though it may have fallen down any day anyway. Mike just helped it along. The bedroom and bathroom were once a hideous shade of pink. Pink walls, black tile. Niiiiiiiiice. I'm going to go with a light shade of blue on the bedroom walls, and a darker tint of the same shade of blue in the bathroom. There is a skylight in the bathroom, so there is usually a ton of light in there, so it should handle the color well. The accents in the two rooms will be peach/coral and off-white. Imagine a cream-colored rose that fades into peaches and corals in the center. That's what I'm going for. I got a great deal on some dried flowers (tiny wine-colored roses and some peachy-colored flowers that I don't know the name of) at a local Michaels that is moving, and I think the colors will go perfectly in there. Then there is all of that black tile, so another accent color will be black by default. I can use it, though. It will be modern shabby chic. I can't wait!! Mike is prepping the walls for painting tonight, getting all of the tiny bits of remaining wallpaper off, scraping the walls down, and plastering the rough spots, and then once the plaster dries we can sand, prime, and then paint! It's a slow process, but totally worth it. These are rooms we spend a lot of time in, so they should look good, right?

I'm done for tonight. I'm sure I'll write more often than I have been. I think I needed a little bloggity break.