I went to IK.EA recently for the first time. I went to buy shelves for my craft room because what I had was painfully insufficient. I got these:

I have a 6 shelf, a 5 shelf and a 4 shelf. They are all attached to each other (I will get photos later). It has radically increased my storage space and allowed me to sort out the felt & “stuff” that I have. While I was there I picked up some glasses, knives and spoons for D.

Last week I went two days in a row! A total of €250 later I now have glasses, knives, spoons, plates, bowls, side plates, bedding, cushions, a pot strainer, toys, a mirror (which will become a felt crafting thing), storage boxes, shelves and gift vouchers to go back with

I have blogged before about my bedding. When I went to IK.EA for the 3rd time I realised that there was a bedding section and that they have a HUGE range of cotton bedding. Do you know how hard it is to find 100% cotton bedding? And it is not expensive. AND the double and king sets have 4 pillow cases in them, not 2. From left to right D, M & I all have new bedding for €100. The last lot of jersey bedding I bought cost me €90 for 1 bed!

I need to go through the storage needs for the craft room and go back next week for the last few things I need.

My eating on the run up to Christmas was increasingly chaotic. I was eating anything I could get my hands on and one night, while staying in my sisters house, ate a whole pack of biscuits. Not good. I am never going to get to my goal weight if I continue to do that. On Christmas Eve I made date bars which are yummy but LOADED in calories. I finished them on Christmas night and then I drew a line under the eating.

Yesterday morning I got up and started the day as I meant to go on. I ate lots of veg & fruit. I had porridge for breakfast. I didn’t graze all day long. The only thing I didn’t do was drink water but I am on that today

On Christmas Day when I was preparing the veg for the dinner I prepared all of the veg that I had bought and put them in the fridge in zip lock bags so yesterday evening when it was time to sort out something for tea I used the left over chicken and the prepped veg and made a stir fry. It was lovely and filling without being high in points.

I have 8 weeks to lose 12lbs which is perfectly doable but I have to set my mind to it.

*cross post with the ifeltlikeit blog*

I feel like all I do is sew but it is not a bad feeling. I am loving the experience and am dragging along my relunctant inner creative self. I still struggle with ideas but all I need to do is see something that someone else made and I am off and running. I have so many new ideas in my head right now but I have to get my orders finished before I can start playing.

I am trying to build up a range of things that can sell throughout the year rather than just at Christmas because while Christmas is only 2 weeks away for me, as a crafter, it is 10 months away.

The ideas I have at the moment are:

Small toy tidy (wall hanging)
Colouring pencil/marker/scissors tidy (wall hanging)
Name banner (wall hanging horizontal & vertical)
Happy Birthday banner (horizontal wall hanging)
Chore/Treat wall hanging

Seasonal
Advent calendar
Happy Christmas banner

My new felt arrived today so I can start filling my orders and then get on with the R&D stuff

I have lost 5st now and for the last week I have been eating everything in sight! I am expecting to be up on Thursday and I completely deserve it! I am 12.5 stone and while I am happy with the weight that I am, I am not happy to stop here.

Well, he is

Two aquaintances seem to have flicked the switch in my brain that I have been trying to flick for maybe 6 weeks. I have been floundering like a not so big any more flounder fish trying to get myself back on track and failing each and every week. I would start Friday morning with the greatest of intentions and would let ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING derail me. I was secret eating, I was eating the whole pack of something and putting the wrapping straight into the bin.

Last Sunday night one made me realise that there are only 7 weeks left until Christmas which I had as my initial end goal and I thought OH SHIT! I’m not going to make it. I got up on Monday morning and I was back on track. I stuck to my points (other than my apple tart in Belvedere) and finished the “week” on Thursday morning 1lbs down at my WW WI.

On Thursday another pointed out that at 1lb a week I would be at my goal in 15 weeks & my straight away thought was NO FREAKING WAY. I am not spending that long getting to my goal! I want to have my gold card in my hand on my 35th birthday. To do that I have to hit my goal weight on January 7th.

After my day off on Thursday I woke yesterday morning more in the zone of getting to my goal than I have been in a LONG TIME. I ate 19 of my 21 points yesterday and didn’t feel hungry (other than when I was ready for my dinner), nor did I feel like I had gone without. Today I had 19 again and not only did I not feel like I had gone without I also felt no need or compulsion to eat the Cuisine de France Parisien that was sitting on the counter waiting for M to eat after work. It wasn’t that I didn’t eat the whole pack of Pink & Whites, I didn’t feel the need to buy them in the first place!

I have solved the problem of not being able to exercise (J learned how to get out of sitting so he couldn’t just sit & watch me showering any more and then he learned to climb out of his bouncy chair so I felt I had to wait until M came home from work to shower which was not condusive to exercise) by rearranging my bedroom so J can stand in his cot & watch me shower. So now that I am back on track with my points I need to restart exercising but I have to be realistic that I need to get the fair over with this weekend and then I will concentrate on exercising.

I am off track. Completely. I can’t figure out why I am sabotaging myself left right and centre. I felt the same as I approached the 200lbs mark but it didn’t last long. Now I am lighter than M which only happened once, for one day, 8 years ago and I don’t have the push to get me to the finish line.

I have 17lbs more to go to hit my WW goal and as much as I want to hit it for Christmas week I am not going to get there by doing what I am doing. Yet I cannot convince myself to stay on track for longer than a week. Twice in the last 6 weeks I have super strict stuck to the program and I lost 2lbs one week and 2.5lbs the other. But I can’t keep it together to stay on the path to what I want. I need to lose 3.5lbs a fortnight between now and Christmas.

I think in part I am afraid of the foreverness of being at my goal weight. I am also aware of the fact that my sisters got to their goal weights earlier this year and have (for their own reasons) not stayed at (or near) it since then. I am afraid that I will hit my goal and then start heading back upwards which is something that I don’t want. Maybe I have a little bit of “If I never get there then my failure will be less bad”, preempting the inevitable that may not actually be inevitable.

D, M and I were playing sword fighting earlier and I know that the only reason I could do it is because I am this size.

Interestingly M and I had our cholesterol checked recently (with our lovely new GP who deserves an post all of his own), mine was 4.8, M’s was 5.7. I would love to know what it was before I started WW and he started eating better by association. As part of the medical that the GP did they checked my BMI which, fully dressed with my runners on, was 28 and the nurse told me that they would rather see it closer to 25. I assured her that it was 38.8 when I got pregnant and that I was on my way to 25.

I love that I feel better. I love that I can wear skinny clothes and look well in them. I love that I see myself in the mirror and I don’t cringe. I don’t love the wobbly belly that I feel when I lie in bed at night. Nor do I love the fat at the top of the inside of my thighs.

When I wear jeans I feel that I look well. When I wear tracksuit bottoms I don’t. I associate tracksuit bottoms with being over weight. On Saturday we had chipper for dinner which I went to collect. I was surprised to find myself thinking about the fact that when I was heavier I felt embarrassed going into the chipper. I was applying my own feelings onto those around me thinking “going to the chipper is what got her into that position in the first place”. On Saturday I felt like an ordinary person feeling no guilt or shame for having a snack box for my dinner.

Can you guess that J is asleep in M’s arms rather than in mine? He fell asleep while I was upstairs with D and is perfectly content in M’s arms which means I have two hands to type which is a complete luxury these days.

He has started pulling to stand, at everything. On Sunday I looked around to see the tiniest finger tips curving over the top of the kitchen table and there he was hanging on for dear life. He will be 11 months at the end of the week. I can’t believe how fast the year has gone.

D moved into his own bed 2 weeks ago and starts the night in his own bed every night. The earliest he has come in to me is 11.15, the latest was 7am (I didn’t know myself that night). He has asked me several times in the last little while when we are going to see you again so here I am asking when we are going to see you again…

M’s business is thriving and we are hoping to close on the purchase of our small holding by the end of the week. We are getting chickens (for eggs) for our back garden in the Spring and will get a polytunnel onto the land as soon as possible.

So there we are. All of our news.

I have started so many posts in my head recently and not gotten them down in print. J is pulling to stand at everything now so I am babyproofing on the hoof. Today my couch was cleared off because he figured out yesterday that he can pull up at it. Oh this part of normal development is not my favourite!

He is eating for the Nation and teething as though his life were dependent on it. He still has no teeth but has tipped over 19lbs which means he put on 5lbs in the first 8 months of his life and 5lbs in the next 3!

I am busy sewing Christmas decorations for the fair that my mother & I are doing next month and was delighted to find today that I have way more finished than I thought I had.

I have now lost 4st 7lbs and am a stones throw away from my first big goal, a BMI of 25. 11lbs more will have me there 11lbs is such a small amount, it feels so near.

I put on a tshirt last week and knew straight away, before I even pulled it down, that it was an 18 and I knew that I wouldn’t be wearing it again.

Yesterday M & I moved some couches and a bed from our house to my PIL’s house leaving lots of space in our house. YAY! There is a lot of sorting to be done here but there was no room to sort anything. Now there is

The first bit of sorting involved moving the filing cabinet from the room that should have been D’s into the spare room. It is ultimately going into the study downstairs where it will live under the printer. As soon as I told D that we were going to move the filing cabinet he said “Then I can sleep in my bed. Can I sleep in it tonight?” I told him that he could as that is why I was moving the filing cabinet. So, he is up there under his Spide.rman bedding, cuddling Dolly, with his own lamp and his own white noise. He is delighted with himself. He and M had a lovely long chat at bedtime about what he could do with his room. He decided there should be a sign on the door reading:

D’s Room
Keep Out
Except Dadda
This is D.C.

I have assured him that he doesn’t have to let J into his room if he doesn’t want to. That he will have his own stuff in his own room. I told him I will empty the wardrobe so that he can store his toys there. He has drawers for his clothes (which we will move in tomorrow) & a box for his costumes. He has been told that if he wakes in the night and is lonely he can come into either M or I for a cuddle. Here’s to his first night in his own room.

Today was a beautiful day. Before I knew it was a beautiful day I had a laundry schedule which meant I should wash the white towels this morning so I washed the white towels. They went out onto the washing line and put on a dark load figuring that if the weather turned the dark load would be the one to dry inside. They went out onto the washing line and put on another dark load figuring that if the weather turned it would be the one to dry inside. And they went out onto the line too. I put my new Girasol wrap on to wash & it made it out onto the washing line too. As I aired the last of them this evening I thought of Caz as I now I have 7 loads of washing to fold & sort but there is only one load of washing waiting to be done and I will take 7 to sort/1 to wash over 1 to sort/7 to wash. D helped me to fold the quilt cover today which was a lovely cute experience (which we get to repeat tomorrow LOL).

Late in the afternoon J headed off to investigate and I heard him patting the bottom step. He has, in the last few days, learned to pull to stand at low objects and how to get into high kneeling to play. He learned this at the bottom step so I wasn’t overly concerned. When I heard the distress call I headed out to help him out of high kneeling only to discover him kneeling on the bottom step, patting the second step. WOAH!!! Wait. Where is my baby gone?

J gained 5lbs1oz in the first 8 months of his life. Then he had his posterior tongue tie released. In the 2.5 months since the release he has gained 4lbs3.5oz! He is positively chubby He has taken a liking to toast. Yesterday morning I gave him rice cake which he ate. Then I made D some toast & offered J more rice cake. He handed it back to me and then he grunted towards the toast, which he went on to eat in its entirity.

Tomorrow is my WW WI. I am almost entirely relying on breastfeeding to lose weight at the moment. It is not a pattern that can continue. I need to get out of this funk. My sister was given a “community tracker” in WW last week (cause she is in a funk too). It is given to a different member each week and they track (the good and the bad) and pass it on. There is a record made of the loss (or gain) in that week. It lets members see what worked for others (and what didn’t) and it also gives people ideas. I am going to ask my leader in the morning if she has a community tracker and if she doesn’t suggest she starts one, with me being the first week. I think it will kick me up the ass, at least for a week. My sister lost 3.5lbs with her CT last week.

6 years ago yesterday I had a laparoscopy to check if everything was where it should be before we started IVF.

3 years ago yesterday I had my first ERPC.

3 years ago at the end of the month my brother agreed to stay in a mental health facility so that my sister could get some sleep.

In those 6 years we did 7 IVF’s with one more ahead of us.

In those 3 years I got pregnant 2 more times and lost another baby, but I got to keep one too – something I am truely grateful for.

In those 3 years my brother has learned to want something again, become able to commit to something that lasts longer than the rest of the week. Last weekend he was reelected as President of the sports body that he is involved in. On Monday he started a PhD.

I am dealing with a lot of 3rd baby envy at the moment, which is not fun. I keep dreaming I am pregnant again and end up waking sad and disappointed. Part of me even feels disappointed with the fact that IVF #8 is so far away but the logical part of my brain knows that it is when it is for a set of very good reasons. I have said it before but I wouldn’t mind the wait if I knew what the outcome would be.