CherylKatz.org

I made vegetarian, no-pasta lasagne last night that was surprisingly satisfying!

One step calls for blanching Romaine lettuce leaves, and I believe that I overdid this step resulting in flaccid leaves, so I added eggplant slices for additional hearty substance.  (I love eggplant for its beefy texture without much in the way of nutritional significance.)

The pureed tofu with cottage cheese, herbs and garlic made a stealthy substitute for ricotta cheese, and my kid liked the mixture along with the lettuce and tomatoes to boot!  However, Sami could do without the asparagus and garlic, thank you very much.

The best part of this recipe - portion sizes are huge!  As linked, it serves six, and one sixth of a baking pan of this is quite filing without being excessively… anything.  The eggplant added abotu 20 calories to the nutritional info of one serving while, in my opinion, making the dish much more satisfying.

Highly recommend for the yum factor.

PS: Added benefit for me is that t’s kosher dairy.  So Sami can take it to school.

I don’t regret for a minute that I supported Hillary Clinton through the primary season.

But I sure am happy with Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee.

Today I would pretty much do nothing but complain.  But since I’m long overdue for a post and have nothing much of any consequence to say, here’s what little blood I can squeeze from the rock of my brain.

1) I had a BLT for lunch that had nine (NINE!  9!) slices of bacon on it.  I’m officially done eating for the day - though to be fair, I’m actually pretty well satisfied.  One would hope to get some satisfaction out of nine slices of bacon.

Yup, it’ll be salad with balsamic for dinner, ladies and gents.

2) I’m in a craptacular mood due to some work stuff I need to resolve this week, and some other work stuff involving me spinning a lot of wheels and not seeing much in the way of results.

3) Our neighbors decided to play a rock concert starting at 2:30 AM right into our bedroom window (real, live electric guitar.)  Ben went out to yell at them but another neighbor beat us and totally outdid anything Ben would have done - she went in full tilt with swearing and everything - and shut them right down.  It was hard to get back to sleep after that.

That is about all I have for today.

Need to find a good workout that won’t stress any one part of my body too much - think I need to work off some of this bacon tonight, but I don’t feel like running.  Can anyone recommend a good video they like for light cardio that’s fun to do, burns enough to be worth doing, but won’t knock me on my ass?  Typically I like a good shred, but today I’m already sore and just want a recovery workout.  Any suggestions are welcome.

So….  remember when I posted about the bridesmaid dress that was too small?  I had real concerns at the time that perhaps fitting into the dress I purchased would be a nearly-failing battle.

As it turns out, the dress is now falling off me in all the places that count.  As in, by the time October arrives, it will be grossly too big.  I’m considering taking the dress back to its source at J. Crew and having them do the necessary alterations, though I have a local alterations person who i’ve liked.  However, she isn’t huge and corporate and someone I’d feel comfortable with making do all the work over again if it for some reason comes back with a fatal flaw, whereas J. Crew knows their dresses and can afford to suck up a few dollars re-doing their own work if it comes back with a broken zipper or crooked seam.

Hmm.

I watched the opening ceremonies with Jen last night, and I actually spent most of the time with my mouth gaping open.  The first hour was just one impressive feat of technological showmanship after another (hello, unscrolling Largest LED Screen In The World, As Long As A Football Field And With People Dancing On It!  or the costumes that lit up on and off during the piece with the bird and the birds’ nest?)

I’d had it recording on our DVR and paused for about an hour and a half before we started watching, so we were able to watch about the first 3 hours without having to see commercials.  Eventually we got tired of the Parade of Nations and I just fastforwarded until we were watching live TV.  Some time around this point, we cut to a shot of the Bushes, in their holy non-priority seating, batman - they were seated like average joes at a baseball game, and boy did W look like he wanted a beer.  And the prez was more-than-glancing at his watch.  International goodwill events are sooooooo boring and time consuming.  Yup.

Well, despite my criticism of the US president, I did actually skip a lot of the parade of nations.  Until I couldn’t fast forward any more, and then we admired outfits and rooted for the little guys.  And THEN Yao Ming and a 9 year old boy who looked like a toddler next to him led the Chinese olympians into the arena.  And it was just a huge time.

The little boy had been a hall monitor, and when his school was destroyed in the earthquakes in Szechuan province a few months ago, after he freed himself from the rubble he WENT BACK to help his teachers and classmates.  He was quoted saying that he felt it was his responsibility, as he was a class leader.

I admit that I’m prone to cry any time the national anthem is played.  Epic events really get to me.  But live news coverage of the earthquakes really touched me at the time, and this boy’s story just pushed me over.  Real tears, people, not the kind that come from anthems.

I can’t bring myself to delete the DVR event just yet.

I dragged my butt to the gym today for the first time since, oh, March.  I came prepared - Sami down for her nap this afternoon, I had time to dig out my heart rate monitor and strap, charge up my iPod, and find the manual for my HRM (ha, I had used it very basically to get real-time checks on my heart rate, but it can do so much more.   Today I learned to program it with my basic vital stats, so that it can guide me mathematically, and I am going to learn how to use the workout information it records to track my fitness progress.

Of course, having programmed my weight, height and resting heart rate into the thing helped it to recommend a range for me, but that didn’t make me stay in it.  I hopped on a treadmill and was shocked at how much easier it is to run without the extra 38 pounds.  I can run now at 5.3 mph at approximately the same effort I felt at 4.8 a few months ago.  And this with minimal hard cardio work, just moderate and frequent daily activity.

I found my experience quite encouraging.  Also encouraging:  my heart rate monitor said I burned way more calories than the treadmill thought I had.  I attribute this in part to the HRM knowing my weight, height and age and the treadmill NOT knowing these things, but I just think the HRM’s algorithm is probably more sophisticated.  This was heartening however.  I’ll be interested to see the discrepancy on an elliptical, as I always feel that the calories burned estimate on an elliptical is disproportionately high.

Anyway.

I was so encouraged that I did an upper and lower body weight circuit.  I was surprised to learn that I haven’t lost much strength over the last two years (the last time I really knew what I could move, I was working with a trainer who really pushed me, so my recollection is those numbers.)

In sum, I hope to be visiting the gym more often in the future.  I came home feeling really awesome (and both exhausted and energetic!)

I haven’t had much time or energy for blogging lately, which is making me feel a little frustrated and sad.  There are things I just won’t remember if I don’t put them here.

Today was really a lovely day.  Sami charmed me by playing peek-a-boo over the back of my dining room chair, and then patting her hand on my chest and saying, matter-of-factly, “Mama!”  Then she’d go over and declare Ben, “Dad-dee,” in similar fashion.

We went to dinner at Kazumi, and Sami hung monkeylike from the back of a high chair containing an 11 month old girl.  (I held the seat so it wouldn’t topple - both kids were, sadly, loving this.)  She was playing the peekaboo game with the little girl, and tickling her toes, and pointing out body parts helpfully.  “Elbow” is one of her newest ones.  She even gave nose-noses and kisses.  I was quite impressed.

On the way home, she repeated over and over, “Embee, embee,” as if I could forget that her sippy was empty.  It would be filled at home.

Days like today it’s not hard to remember why I love Sami, and forget all the ways that toddlers are frustrating.

When I picked Sami up yesterday, I had a raging stomach ache. I just was not feeling myself.

She was behaving a little waywardly, and on the way to the car decided she wanted to push buttons on the front door of the building, and wouldn’t follow me toward the parking lot.

I went over and picked her up, and explained to her, “Momma has a tummy ache.” I pointed at my belly and made a sad face. “Hurts. I need you to be nice to me.”

And so Sami pet me on the arm and the shoulder saying, “Niiiiiiiice. Niiiiiiiice,” and made a sad, serious, concerned and caring face.

I think I almost died just then. Luckily she was sweet and cuddly at home in between her raging tantrums. She kept me comfortable *and* grounded in reality.

In other news - Sami is saying things, and saying numbers of words together, that she wasn’t doing on Friday. It really does all change overnight.

Also, in case you’re missing pictures, well I’d post some, but every time I take out the camera I am greeted with a fat tantrum and grab for the camera. So it gets put away pretty quickly. And the picture I typically get to take is not a cute one. Though I may post it soon, anyway, just to share the proof.

That’s all for today. Life is good.

My last post was kind of an angsty cry, whereas this one is the honest truth - breastfeeding is over.  She still makes her “nursing” sign, but now when she does it it seems to mean, “cuddle me.”

I get a ton more random cuddles.  Sami will now sit through an entire book from front to back cover with me - she never did that before, always with Ben and other people.  I guess now that I’m more than just cuddly boobs, she can find the time.  She eats a ton more.  It seems like she sleeps better, though don’t talk to me about that right now….* And she is bonding with Ben a little bit more.  I’d be jealous, but she bonds with me just as much, and each of us differently.

My little girl is growing up.

I still feel weird.  This is the first week of my life with no nursing since the day Sami was born.  It’s just slightly shocking.  She doesn’t need me for anything she couldn’t also get from Ben at this point.  She uses her pacifier a little more heavily now and is more reluctant to leave it at home or in the car when we go to school, but I imagine this will pass, and she isn’t even 2 years old yet.  She’ll give up the binks eventually.

In terms of my adjustment, I’m a little sad.  Very proud.  I’ve lost a few extra pounds since the last time we nursed, I guess nursing forces my body to hang on to reserve weight just in case?  That’s the theory I’m going on.  And I’m shrinking from D cup, which is sad but to be expected.  Emotionally I’m in balance, so that’s the good part.  I’ve been a little touchy but nothing that won’t pass with a few more weeks.  I’m focusing on the massive lingerie shopping trip I’ll get to do when I’m sure my cup size has stabilized, and not on the fact that my baby doesn’t need the girls any more.

I was going to say “In other news…” but I can’t think of any other news that isn’t on another topic entirely.  So I’ll wrap up and post on another topic another time.

In sum - it’s done.

* For the first time in for EVER, despite being absolutely exhausted from the heat and all the climbing and playing, Sami would not go to sleep.  She cried and cried and cried and asked for Mommy, until finally I went back in there and lay down on the bed - with her in her crib.  As soon as I lay down, she did the same.  I lay there for who only knows how long, and then peeked over at her. She waved.  I put my head back down for a while.  Tried to get up, nope, not ready.  Finally I told her it’s time to sleep.  Call me if you need me.  Love you.  Here’s tuck-tuck and blanky.  THEN she lay down, curled up and not another peep out of her for the evening so far.  That was really fun.  Hope we can do it again sometime.

I am liquidating the contents of a closet full of hoarded yarn that I *totally* forgot about until we scoured the house last night for Ben’s hat, which we ultimately still failed to find.

http://sandiego.craigslist.org/csd/art/728616204.html

I’ve posted them on craigslist, but if anyone I know wants these I’ll find a way to get ‘em to you.  I just want this closet space back!  (One day, one fine day, all my craft supplies will fit in one closet.  Ah, a girl can dream.