Edward is one year!

Ok, fine. Technically Edward is 1 year and 1 month because I have been a blogging slacker! But now that it is spring break and I have no lessons, I'll take the opportunity to catch up a wee bit. Yes, I know, I missed Christmas. Maybe one day I'll get back to it. It's a little overwhelming to go backward.

So Edward. He is getting so big!  We went to his 1 year check up last week.

Weight: 23 lbs. 6 oz (53%)
Height: 32.5" (97%!)
H Circ: 18" (25%)

He started walking about 2 weeks ago. He's been walking exclusively (only occasionally crawling) for about a week and he's very close to running.

He's cutting, oh, about 6 teeth right now including top and bottom pre-molars. Poor kid. He drools like crazy and is gnawing on everything. He's a little grumpier than normal, but not much. He's still such a good, happy kid.

He's down to 1 nap a day and usually falls asleep either to or from picking up Dean and then I have to transfer him to his bed when we get home. Poor 3rd child. The world doesn't revolve around him.  That's probably what has made him so sweet and good and fairly flexible.

He can climb up and down our stairs by himself and we no longer have gates up. He loves to eat (seriously, I have never had a child who eats so much! But he doesn't like milk or Isagenix milk as much as the other two did) and I have him weaned except one morning feeding, though I'm sure he'd be just fine if I cut that one out. I like nursing and have kind of weaned him slowly. I bet in the next month he'll be totally weaned.

We took this video this past Sunday during family home evening so we could get his cute toddle before it turns into an all out run. This is a fairly typical home evening, maybe even better than normal since the boys weren't fighting at all on the video. Haha. The kids are never still.


108 0522 from Celia Brasfield on Vimeo.

  I don't think I've taken any bath pictures of him, but he loves the bath. Seriously loves it. Matt is the one who usually bathes them and he snapped these some time last month.

 

Since his birthday is on Valentine's Day, we moved our traditional Valentine's Day cheesecake to the Sunday before his birthday so we could still enjoy it and have a regular birthday cake as well. Matt did still get me my traditional gerbera daisies though.  We had meat pies and potatoes and peas. It was perfect because he could eat almost everything and the other boys looove meat pies. After dinner we opened presents. Here he's opening a Mr. Potato head. Surprisingly, we've never owned one of these.

Opening and eating some odd balls.

And the cake. It was a yummy carrot cake. I iced it blue, and I should have stopped there. I saw the sprinkles in the cupboard from Dean's cake and decided to have a go at it. When it was done I thought, "Oh man, it looks like a rainbow just threw up on his cake."  Oh well. He didn't mind.  He went face first.

We thought we'd teach him some manners and let him have a go with a fork.

We love this little guy and he's getting big so fast! It is so fun being his mom. So glad he's a part of our family.

Before and After Diastasis Recti

This was me at 39 weeks. I went to 40 weeks 4 days

I hadn't really wanted to do this post till my diastasis recti was totally closed, but seeing as though it's been a year since I had Edward, I figured I'd check in for those of you who were curious.


A little less than a year ago I started the Tupler program with the splint, doing her special ab workout 3 times a day.

I have worn the splint on and off. I can do the recommended 24 hour a day thing for only about 3 weeks at a time and then I start feeling too...trapped...and take a break. The program says it's 6 weeks to great abs or something like that, but I think that's if you're starting at a two finger gap or something.  The booklet says it could take up to a year of diligently following the program.

Splinting 4 weeks postpartum

I started at a 6 finger gap. What does that mean? It means that after I had my baby, I could lay on my back and stick 6 fingers between the right and left sides of my abs at my belly button.  When I sat up, I could feel the muscles pull together and tighten around those 6 fingers. That's pretty bad. "Normal" is like 1 finger or less. It is so crazy to feel the muscles so far apart. Most pregnant ladies' abs close most of the way on their own and some never have split abs. I'm pretty sure I started around a 3 finger gap when I got pregnant with Edward, though I was totally clueless about it. That's why I started showing at 6 weeks pregnant! You better believe that when I'm pregnant with my 4th I'll be doing some splinting and some Tuplers to try and minimize the damage.

I was able to stay quite diligent and go from a 6 to 3 finger gap within about a month. I could not wear the splint during the summer here. It felt like it was going to suffocate me in the hot TX summer. That set me back a bit. Since then I've had a hard time really sticking religiously to the program. I slimmed out of my first splint and needed a smaller size. I finally got it and I've been doing ok with getting some tuplers in every day. But, I'm still around a 1.5-2 finger gap.

One of the worst things about having a diastasis recti is that I apparently am not supposed to do any ab work with a forceful forward movement or my abs can split further. That mean no crunches, no sit ups, no P90X ab workouts etc. I feel like there is a lot of toning that I need to do that I can't do. Maybe I"ll just risk it and see if it really does set me back. I'm ready to do something different to flatten/tighten my tummy. So, overall, not bad, but not perfect. I am still grateful for the body that God gave me and I'm going to try my best to take care of it.

Before Tupler: March 2012 

4 weeks postpartum.  "Normal" i.e. not sucking in

4 weeks postpartum, sucking in/flexing to the max

 After Tupler: February 2013

"Normal" not sucking in/flexing

Flexing

Front shot

*Addendum* This bod did not just come about by doing her program. I eat pretty well, run a lot, and use Isagenix products as well. I was mainly saying hers is the only ab program I've done since then.

Christmas letter and pictures

Spoiler! Some of you will actually get a physical copy of this. I wanted to post it before I left though, so here it is, probably before you'll see our actual card.

Merry Christmas! 2012 has been a very, very busy year for us!   

Edward (10 mo.)  was 4 days over due and was born on Valentine’s Day. He has been my best sleeper and probably the calmest baby I’ve had. He learned to roll over, sit up, stand up, and talk (mama, dada, hi, bye, yeah, more) earlier than the other 2. I guess when you’re the third you just have to keep up. He currently is working on standing alone and has taken a step, but decided he was not ready for that just yet and hasn’t tried it again. He is very good at climbing our stairs and just today figured out how to go down the stairs in a safe way. He gets very excited to say hi and bye to “dada” and loves being around people.  He has 6 teeth and his favorite game is peek-a-boo.

Walter (3 years) is convinced that he is older than Dean and does not believe that he is only 3 years old. He is finally (FINALLY!) in underwear, though we are still working on taking breaks from fun activities to avoid accidents.  He is all boy, that kid. He loves to wrestle, tackle Edward, tackle Dean, tease Dean endlessly, play with cars and trucks and superheroes, and he thinks potty humor is the funniest kind of humor (just came programmed that way!). He really is our little funny guy. He loves trying to make people laugh and doesn’t quite get that some things are only funny once…He’s been attending a co-op preschool that I rotate teaching with 2 other moms. He loves it and often asks when school is. He holds his pencil (even as a lefty!) correctly and is quite good at tracing. He is very good at riding his balance bike, and feels like he’s in constant competition with Dean. His current favorite show is Curious George.

Dean (5 years) has really started growing up.  In the last few months, he has learned how to play with Walter and has loosened up a lot.  They mostly build “rockets’ out of legos and fly them all over the house and yard. Their second favorite game is “Edward is a monster”.  That one usually ends in me telling them not to shut the door on him or cover him in blankets or drag him around. But Edward endures it well.  He learned how to pump on the swings, ride a pedal bike without training wheels, he can read, do addition and subtraction and can even do simple multiplication and division. And he hasn’t even started kindergarten yet! He is extremely bright and often thinks he is an adult. The biggest things we have to work on with him are respecting adults and not bossing other kids around. He’s in preschool 3 hours a day, 4 days a week. He loves art, science, math, and is amazingly good at navigating computers. He loves watching Matt play computer games and often “plays” those games in real life when he is at school (and much to my chagrin, in church and public as well!). His current favorite show is Cyberchase.

I (Celia) was able to have an unmedicated VBA2C in Feb., which was amazing. Since then my time has been filled with adjusting to 3 kids, getting our house ready to sell, selling our house, buying and moving to a new house/town, driving Dean into McKinney every day for school, teaching Walter’s preschool co-op, and teaching piano.  I LOVE my new neighborhood. Love, love, love it. It’s an amazing location and I love the people here. I finally feel like I have a place and community where we could raise our kids for the duration of their childhood. Since moving to Melissa, I immediately acquired 6 students, and I have since added 10 more students to my studio!  My life feels very busy and full. I love teaching piano. I have actually started taking piano lessons again and am trying to focus on technique, theory, and pedagogy that I didn’t get when I was younger. The only  “hobby” I’ve kept up since having Edward is running. I’ve been working on speed. I ran a 10K in May and got second in my category, but I ended up in the hospital. I hadn’t hydrated well enough to compensate for nursing a 3 month old.  I ran a 5K in November and got a personal record of 23:28 and took first in my category. Next on my race list is a 10K minus the hospital visit at that same pace, and then a half marathon at that pace. I still love running in my Vibram 5-finger shoes. We also had a chance to drive to UT (20+ hours each way) for a family reunion with my entire family  (7 kids, 21 grandkids). It was a blast! I also got to see my family at both my Grandpa and Grandma Hunt’s funerals. Reunions like those are bittersweet. My parents came here for Thanksgiving, which was also very fun.

Matt is still a software engineer at Raytheon and has upped his commute from 3 min. to 15 min. since moving. He worked really hard to get our house sellable and it really paid off! We sold it for 7K more than the realtor wanted to list it for, and we had multiple offers within 2 days of being on the market. Most of the beauty was a result of Matt’s hard and immaculate work. Since moving here, he’s already built himself an awesome workbench in our garage and has fixed other random things. He’s quite an amazing guy.

We hope all is well with you!  Life is full, and God is good. We’re grateful we have all of you in our lives. 

These pics are all the right way on my computer, but I don't have time to fix them for blogger. Sorry 'bout that. 

Stretching

As if I weren't already busy...

I recently tripled my piano studio due to a teacher in my area having debilitating arthritis. I am looking forward to it, but hope I haven't over booked myself. 

I had my second piano lesson with my new teacher today. It was very interesting. I have always felt like I am a good pianist. Now, I know that I am not a concert trained pianist, but I've always felt like a solidly GOOD pianist. Today I felt like I was playing for the first time! I am basically in need of a total overhaul in technique, and I am realizing how much my theory is lacking. I basically stopped taking piano from classical teachers when I was 14. Years of playing "incorrectly" and now I'm having to strip that and rethink what it really means to PLAY the piano, to COMMAND the piano. For a split second (ok, a little longer than that) I wondered if I really was qualified to teach.  I wrote my teacher an email expressing my frustrations, and she sweetly replied with encouragement. I feel very blessed to have found her. I really think she is the right person for me right now.

It is easy to sit comfortably stagnant. While it might be painful and embarrassing at times, it is in the stretching that we find growth and movement and new life.

Thanksgiving and Meeting goals

We had my parents here for Thanksgiving week and we had so much fun! It was the first time in over 10 years that I had Thanksgiving with them. We got a new camera, however, and I'm having problems getting the software to convert the RAW pics to JPEGS, so photos will have to wait. The few pics I have are from my mom's phone that she posted to facebook.

Bike ride to "the climbing tree" with gpa and gma

The week was fantastic. My parents took a red eye flight on Spirit to save a little $$. My mom said she would never do it again, but my dad didn't seem to mind. My dad is amazing and played everything from sword fighting to rocket ships to finger painting with the boys to swinging and giving horsey rides. My mom humored the boys and played some wii with them, read to them, and painted with them as well.  One day she was playing wii with Walter (3) who was beating her. He asked why she kept losing. She said she didn't really play games much. He said something like, "Don't worry Grandma, the more wii you play, the smarter you will get." haha.

wii with Grandpa after his red eye flight

On Wed. we went to the Fountains at Fairview and the kids played in the beach sand park with Grandpa while my mom and I looked for some new vibrams. NO LUCK! I have looked at 5 places now and I can't find any of the style of 5-finger shoes in my size. Boo. But the kids had a lot of fun. We picked up the last few items for dinner at Whole Foods since it was right there.

My mom and I made 3 pies: apple, pecan, and pumpkin. We experimented with the crust and used coconut oil instead of the shortening. It was not exactly the same, but it worked out quite well and I loved the hint of coconut flavor it gave to the pies. We also made bread dressing (I made my own bread for it...it worked well), green bean casserole (with organic frozen green beans), sweet potatoes, homemade cranberry sauce with walnuts, mashed potatoes, fruit salad, celery with cream cheese, and Matt made the best turkey we've had to date! It was even better than the smoked turkey we got from Hutchins one year. It was a free range turkey that was grass fed. TOTALLY made a difference in flavor.  We did our traditional Alton Brown brine on it and roasted it in the oven. He made some awesome gravy from the drippings and homemade stock as well. It was moist and tasted great. We decided against rolls this year, and while my sister Julie thought it was tragic, I don't think any of us missed them. There was plenty of food to satiate us.

The weather was beautiful here this week. In the70's mostly. They were able to run every morning. Such good examples. My dad found a Pilgram Dr. here in liberty on Thanksgiving morning. Fitting.

They flew back to AZ late last night, and this morning I ran the McKinney Believe 5k.  I ran it last year 30 weeks pregnant and had a chip time of 26:29 and came in second in my category. This year I set a goal to have sub 8 min. miles and come first in my category since, you know, I'm not 30 weeks pregnant! ha.

I felt great and decided to run in my Brooks Pure Connect rather than my duck taped vibrams since it was chilly this morning. I made sure I ate a real breakfast (oatmeal with walnuts) and drank plenty of water before I left. I didn't want to end up in the hospital like that last 10K I ran!  Only problem: while I used the restroom twice before I left, I still really could have benefited from them having a port-a-potty at the start of the race. No such luck.  As the race started I had a few minor problems with my mp3 player but quickly fixed it and got in a good rhythm. I was keeping a 7 mi./hr pace the first while, sometimes dipping into the 6s. I was getting pretty thirsty because I thought I forgot my water bottle (I really didn't! It was just buried in my bag that I left in the car.) so I drank from the first water station. I think it slowed me down a little, but I didn't care. When a woman I'd chatted with before the race caught up with me, I tried to kick it up again slightly. The next two water stations I just sipped in and spat out. My body was feeling pretty great except I could kind of tell I'd eaten a full breakfast. I nearly caught a super tall girl that I had my eye on the whole race. I put the heat on her and she ended up beating me by 10 seconds. After it was over I had a man come up and tell me I did great and that my sprint at the end made him kick himself into high gear. That made me feel good.

I ended up getting a chip time of 23:28!!! I placed 1st in my age category and 8th out of 305 women overall in the 5k, so not bad. That came to 7:30 min./mi. pace. I was ecstatic. It was my personal record for any run over 3 miles. After I had Edward my ultimate goal was to get to 7:30 repeatable miles! 9 months later and bam. Now I just need to be able to repeat it for a 10K and then for a half marathon. I got first in my category and managed to not have to go to the hospital. (Though, I failed to call Matt right after my race and stayed for the award ceremony. He called the hospitals to double check to make sure I wasn't admitted anywhere! Ooops.) So yay! All goals realized.

After I got home and showered, I fed the boys and put Edward down and took the 2 older boys to Dickens of a Christmas in McKinney. It was fun. They got to do the bounce house, go down a fake snow hill on a tube, and ride on the train. They even got kettle corn at the end. This is our 3rd year going, so I feel like we're making a tradition of it.


It's been a great holiday. Hopefully I can figure my camera out and can start posting pictures again. Hope everyone reading this had a fantastic holiday too! Family just made it so much better for us. So grateful to be a part of a good family.

First words

I just realized I still need to post Halloween. Oops. I've been busy. Another piano teacher here had to retire because of bad health problems and I inherited 10 of her 15 students! So now I'm up to 16 from 6 last week!!  I'm hoping I am not overextending myself...


Anyway, I wanted to record that Edward has started talking. He is just shy of 9 months and his first words are: hi, dada, and bye. His main word it dada. It started out as ada, but he's been saying dada more the last few days. He is waving and just figuring out how to clap. He can pull to stand on just about anything and he can stand alone for a few seconds.

The whirlwind week and Dean is 5

My house looks like it's been hit by a tornado.  The truth of the matter is, it has been a ca-ray-zy week around here and I have not had a spare moment to clean up. Or rather, I've not had a spare moment to clean up the 5th or 6th time each day and that little bit adds up to a disaster area. 

On Monday I taught Walter's preschool on the letter I. We had an insect infestation and did a lot of insect activities. For snack I cut up hot dogs and had green grapes and gave them toothpicks and let them create insects out of them.   That was fun.That afternoon I taught 2 piano lessons.  I also started Dean's rainbow cake since I had to bake 6 individual cakes to stack on top of each other.

Tuesday was Dean's 5th birthday.  I got up at 5:30 and began baking. He told me he wanted muffins for his birthday breakfast, so I baked muffins followed by a batch of sugar cookies for his school snack/treat. I frosted them in a rainbow since he loves rainbows. I quickly dropped him off at school, went shopping for the ingredients I was missing for his frosting, came home and put the cake together.  Then I picked him up and we got hotdogs at sonic and then went for his free ice cream at baskin robin.  After we got home I set out to clean the kitchen enough to make the meat pies he wanted for dinner. Phew. That was a lot of baking on Tuesday.  That night we had a family birthday where he opened our gifts and had cake. He seriously took 2 bites of his cake and proclaimed that he had had too much sugar that day. haha. Overload.

Wed. I taught the letter J. I've had J before with Dean's group and it was a disaster from beginning to end. Next to nothing "preschool cool" starts with J. Seriously.  Think through it. Not much.  Anyway, I pretty much just did a loose Jack O Lantern theme and added in lots of pumpkin stuff since that's what Jack O Lanterns are made out of. We talked about the life cycle of a pumpkin, weighed and measured pumpkins and compared it to the weight and measurements of the boys. We tested to see if they would sink or float. We played pin the nose on the jack o lantern.  Lots more stuff too.  That night I taught more piano.

Thursday after I dropped Dean off at school, my visiting teachers stopped by.  I kind of unloaded my busy week on them.  As one of my VT was leaving, I apologized for still being in my running clothes and explained that I'd planned to run, but I missed my window of opportunity since Edward was napping and it was nearly time to get Dean.  She so very kindly offered to stay with Walt and Edward while I went running right then and there. That was such a blessing!  I hadn't been running once this week because it's just been too crazy with too much stuff for me to prep in the morning or at night.  I busted out a super fast run (seriously, I averaged 7:24 min. miles!!!), came home and took a cold shower, and then went and picked Dean up. It was the only run I got in this week, so bless that sweet sister's service!  I tried catching up on some neglected house work, but I merely dented it after folding 4 loads of laundry.  That night I tried furiously to finish sewing the boys' costumes, but I only nearly finished one of the vests.

 On Friday I did more sewing, tried to finish up Dean's party preparations, and Matt and I ended up going to a Halloween costume party.  As I was getting dressed in my one and only costume (asian lady and Matt as a ninja), my zipper popped on my dress. The dress was plenty roomy, but it was a 10 year old dress and it was, afterall, made in China. =) Luckily I had back up Asian clothes. haha. The back up outfit was actually quite a bit more comfortable anyway. It was the same fabric but in a shirt and I wore my black slacks and my sky high Chinese hooker heals and black wig.  We didn't really know anyone at the party well but had only met a few of them at church. It was a lot of fun though. The funnest game was "never have I ever" and there were a lot of yummy desserts. It was really fun to do something like this because it has been AGES since we've gone on a date or mingled with other adults in such a setting.  After I got home I sewed a little more.

This morning I got up and made the boys breakfast and commenced sewing. I finished their vests and then set out to finish up party planning since, you know, the party was in a few hours. I made some black "cannon ball" bean bags for a game I called sink the ship. I got out our Noah's Ark since that was the only ship like thing I had, and I had the kids try and knock the ship over. They also played pin the nose on the pumpkin, cannon ball bowling, had lunch, and had a scavenger hunt around the house (thank you pinterest for making one up for me since I didn't have a spare moment!), just played for awhile, and had cake and presents. It turned out as well as I could have possibly imagined. Since I didn't have time to make any cupcakes, I had Matt pick some up at Tom Thumb while he was out getting the pizza. Best decision I made this morning. =) I didn't need one more responsibility.

 

After the kids left, I made some chili for our ward party tonight and got back to sewing. I finished up the boys' pirate costumes minus the boot covers about an hour before the party. We'll see if I get around to making the boot covers at all. The chili turned out great. I tried a tomato-less chili since Matt doesn't like tomatoes/tomato sauce in his very much. I thought it was really good for all experimentation. I fed the boys some sandwiches since I knew they wouldn't eat the chili and didn't want them to get it on their costumes anyway. It was a mad dash to get them all dressed and to the church by 5:30.  It was pretty chilly out and the boys (wait, just Dean) complained enough about being cold that I went and found a coat in the car for Dean and gloves for Walter (who actually didn't complain at all, but I could tell he was cold). After dinner, we made the parking lot rounds for our ward's Trunk or Treat. I thought it was much better laid out than any of the trunk or treats we did in McKinney.  A lot of the cars were decorated and they were all backed into the sidewalk so you could easily go from car to car without worrying about getting hit by anyone.  It was a lot of fun.

We came home and got the kids in bed and I took a little break to do this. Now it is 10:30 and I'm dreading going down stairs to see the mess-I-should-probably-clean-up-but-will-most-likely-ignore-until-tomorrow.

    
It has been a very full week. I'm glad it's over and that I was able to accomplish the most important things. I am blessed. I have a great family.