Sensitive Boy

My husband and I are faced with a very delicate and difficult situation at home. We have a very sensitive son who gets his feelings hurt easily.  He is well liked at school and most of the time gets along well with his classmates. Like most eight-year-old kids, he’s trying to figure out the social rules of second grade.

My husband was a worrier as a kid, and it seems like my son has a very similar personality. Just yesterday, he came out of school upset about something. It takes some coercing to get him to talk to us, but I finally got the information out of him. Turns out, he made a mistake in music class, and he was embarrassed by it. I asked him if anyone made fun of him, no they didn’t, he said. 

He is a tender-hearted little boy, and that’s why everyone loves him. He always stands up for people who get picked on at school. I just worry that he will become the chum in the shark tank if he doesn’t learn to thicken his skin a little.  He’s an honorable boy, is so sweet to his sister, does well in school, and I don’t want to mess up his personality for something that could just be a phase that most kids go through. We have set up a reward system that we give him one star for every day that he doesn’t cry. He and his sister are working toward a visit to Disneyland. 

My husband and I have had numerous disagreements on the approach to “toughen him up.” My son is not as socially astute as his younger sister (she is a force to be reckoned with, even at age five), and he is quick to tear up.  Sometimes I think he will grow out of it, but I still reinforce that it is not acceptable for any reason to cry at school. My husband thinks we should have some tough love solutions, but I fear that will only lead to resentment. 

If you are a parent of a child that has gone through this, I would love to hear from you. Any suggestions? Are we on the right path? 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

House Hunting and Superstitions

Dear Readers:

OK, I’ve got a good one for you. My husband and I have been looking for houses here in Orange County for a full year now since we sold our house in San Diego in January.  We had rented it out since we moved to Orange County in September 2010 because the housing market was at it’s worst.  It only slightly improved by the time we sold it, but we wanted our assets to be liquid in case we found a house and wanted to move on it. 

We’ve been narrowing our search parameters down to the current city that we live in because the kids are in a great school, and it’s central to the freeways, shopping centers and the beach. This also narrows our choices as well, good houses in our price range are few and far between and get snapped up very quickly. We’ve put in a few offers, but were either outbid or in the case of one short sale house, the owner clearly didn’t want to give up his house, and made the situation so thorny that we walked away.  

So, my husband has put a moratorium on talking about, tweeting or posting on Facebook the specifics on any deal we are working on. Which brings me to the point of my post. How superstitious are you about bidding on a house?  What are your rules regarding posting, tweeting or talking about it to friends, family or complete strangers on the internet? I would really like to know.  

 

Back to Health

It was a rough week. My whole family, including myself, was sick during Spring Break last week. The only thing that made that bearable was that the weather sucked here in Southern California, rainy and overcast most of the week.  I had the flu, felt terrible. On top of that, I had to take care of an emergency toothache which turned out in need of a crown. While we were at it, I had some fillings replaced and cavities filled in. I figured I might as well get all the nastiness out of the way so my mouth will feel better by summer. I actually have a beautiful smile now since all those ugly dark silver fillings are out of my mouth.

Between the flu and the dental work though, I haven’t been up to eating solid foods, but I don’t want to put crap in my body either. I have been subsisting on freshly pressed juices from Mother’s Market. They have a wonderful juice bar (so does Whole Foods if you live near one of those), and I have been drinking these great juices with beet, spinach, carrot, kale, apple, pinapple and ginger juices in them. I actually started liking beet juice when it is mixed with sweeter juices. It was also nice to wean my body’s addiction to processed sugars. It certainly wasn’t easy, it feels a lot like weaning yourself off caffeine. 

I do feel better today, but avoided the gym since my jaw is still sore after being worked on for two straight hours last night. 

But the BIG news was how much weight I lost: six pounds over the past week. I took off half the weight I needed to just by being sick or not being able to eat. Probably not the most ideal weight loss, but I guess it’s a means to an end. So now I’m down to 131, and only 6 pounds left to reach my goal before summer starts. 

Now I just have to keep it off. 

Small Changes Make Big Differences

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Lao-tzu

We usually try to make the Herculean task of losing weight at the New Year or in Spring, when the though of bikini season looms in the not too distant future. By March, many have already fallen off the wagon, or in this case, the treadmill, from their New Year resolutions, but we find renewed hope in April that all is not lost, and Spring is a second chance at making good on our promises to ourselves.

Here is Southern California, we have an unattainable model set before us in Los Angeles. Just north of us, women are starving themselves and going under the knife to stay a size 0. The movie,television and fashion industries only perpetuates the problem by hiring younger, skinnier girls to feed the monster. This is both unrealistic and unhealthy. I’ll save my diatribes about plastic surgery for another day.

I am starting a new “weight loss” program that I think will help me, and hopefully you too, dear readers, should you decide to join me on this adventure. It might take a little effort on all our parts, but it costs nothing and is not a new fad diet, just an exercise in persistence and accountability.

A friend I met through Twitter and who is now my fitness coach, Kim Olsen, invited me to join a 30-day photo a day program to document your weight loss through the month of April. Each day you photograph something different. You can go to http://www.teambeachbody.com for more details and it is where you post your photos to be eligible for the prizes Yes! There are goodies to win!

I’m the kind of person that needs to be held accountable for all my actions during a weight loss regimen. I did great on Weight Watchers, I had to track all my food and exercise, and I love their recipes, I still use them even though I am no longer officially on the program. I currently use a tracker called Lose It! on my iPhone. Soon after my daughter was born, I suffered from major post-partum depression and ate to compensate from the stress of being at home with two little kids (my son was two at the time).

Here I am at my daughter’s baptism. She was 2 at the time. I was at 163 pounds, my heaviest ever (not during a pregnancy). I am only 5’3″, so that is a lot of weight to carry around for someone with my frame.

Any mom can tell you how frustrating it is to try and lose weight after you have a baby. It was easy with Casey, I put him in the jogging stroller and away we went, I got back to my pre-baby body pretty quickly. But after the second child, there are logistical challenges parents aren’t prepared for. We joined the gym, but every time we tried to leave the kids with the child care center, the baby freaked out. If I tried to wait until my husband came home, he was too tired from work to watch the kids. We were in San Diego at the time, and too far away from family for them to come and babysit while I needed a break. We didn’t have a babysitter. I tried versions of stroller workouts, but by that time, Casey was a little Houdini and would unclip himself from the stroller, and he was too little to run along with me. Home workouts just didn’t get the heart rate up enough for a good cardio and fat burn workout for me.

So in October 2009 after battling a long illness with sinus issues and bronchitis, I went to the doctor and had a eye opening moment. When I stepped on the scale, a whopping 163 stared back at me. I had never weighed that much, except when I was in my last month of pregnancy with each of my children. I was horrified that I allowed myself to get up that high. For someone my size, at 5’3″ that was considered obese. I knew I HAD to lose weight because I was huffing up stairs and getting tired easily, which only added to the depression I was suffering from.

This appointment was right before Halloween, so I went home and immediately got on Weight Watcher and started a plan to decrease my weight. I hope this helps any of you if you need a starting line.

1. Like the blog title says, Small changes make big differences. Especially in food choices. Substitute ground turkey instead of ground beef for tacos, hamburgers, lasagna, chili. The possibilities are endless.

Dairy is a big culprit. If you don’t think you can cut it out entirely yet, change to skim milk instead of whole or 2%. There is even a non-fat half and half.

Switch to baked snack chips instead of fried potato chips there are a lot of options out there nowadays.

Give yourself a break, you can’t expect to start eating quinoa and kale on your first day out, you’re going to fail if you do. Eat more salads with light, trace amounts of salad dressing, eat it before your meal and eat slowly, it helps fill you up faster.

2. Take your weight loss goal in small chunks. At the time, I had over 30 pounds to lose, so I broke it up into 10 pound increments, which made attaining my goal much easier. It only took me a year to lose that 30 pounds.

Don’t try to lose weight too fast, it is dangerous and unhealthy and you will gain it all back if you crash diet.

3. See your doctor. Make sure you don’t have any underlying health issues that will make your exercise and weight loss program a problem for you.

I hope reading my story helps you understand me a little better and you know it may feel like you are looking down the barrel of a gun sometimes with the daunting task of weight loss, but it can be done!

Aimee

Here’s my current photo that I am using for my Day 1 photo for the Team Beachbody Challenge. I’m at 137, only 12 pounds to my goal of 125 by Memorial Day!

This is an interesting dilemma for parents. If you saw 60 Minutes this past Sunday, you saw a parent who held her child back a year for what looked like more of an athletic advantage for her son. I’m not throwing shade on anyone here, but Redshirting clearly needs to be done on a case-by-case basis and can be detrimental to all kids involved, not just the child being Redshirted. Parents considering this need to consider the school district’s cut-off date for entering the school year. Ours was December 1. That is much later than most of the country. You also need to consider your child’s academic capabilities and emotional maturity. My son was born in late November, one and a half weeks before the district’s cut-off date. We were going to give him two years of preschool. I thought I was going to be able to put him in the three-year-old class, so he would be three half the year, four the other half, then the next preschool year, it would be four to five. But the district made me put him in the four year old class, he was at least 6 months younger than most of his classmates. Some were nine months older than him. He did benefit from being in the class with the older kids, he is very skilled at emulating older children. We were very fortunate the following year because he qualified for a transitionary Kindergarten program specifically designed for late-fall children. We were also very fortunate that the district we were in made this program a priority because they saw so many kids slip through the cracks during Kindergarten. The demographics of the class were almost comical. 20 boys to 4 girls. This year was crucial to many of the children, my son included, it gave him the extra year to catch up in growth and maturity, and introduced him to the Kindergarten curriculum at a slower pace. When we moved to Orange County the next school year, he went into a regular Kindergarten class and was at the same academic level with all the other kids. the district we moved into didn’t have the transitionary Kindergarten program. The idea was scrapped because of budget cuts. So it was a godsend that we got him in the class when we were down in San Diego. My son is in first grade now and excelling in math and science. He loves school, loves to read and is an excellent student and conscientious toward his classmates.
Here’s that 60 Minutes segment if you are interested:
60 Minutes: Redshirting

Mom in the Muddle

It was during this time two years ago that I was really starting to stress. We had to decide whether to send our daughter to kindergarten in the fall or hold her back a year. Her late August birthday meant she would probably be the youngest in her class or the oldest if we held her back. She turned five the day before kindergarten, and we sent her.

For my husband, there was never an issue. He had a late September birthday and he did fine. She would go. For me, every possible outcome needed consideration. Nearly everyone we knew suggested redshirting, a common trend of holding kids back from school a year, giving them what’s considered the gift of time.

My husband and I thought this practice was a bunch of baloney. She could already read. She knew her numbers to 100. And kindergartners spend a lot of time…

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This is a great article. Many of these questions were posed during our Engagement Encounter required by the Catholic Church when we were married. I think these questions, however difficult, need to be discussed in order to have a successful, long-lasting marriage. My husband Jim and I are going on 13 years.

Long time since I wrote

Hello Readers,
This post is about nothing in particular other than while I was sick I had plenty of time to read other bloggers work. I decided that sometimes I’ll just have to post short sweet little notes to keep up my writing prowess. I just can’t write long posts all the time, especially with the kids running around, and I need to just keep in contact. So to keep you entertained and/or interested in me, I’ll post shorter, more frequent entries from now on. I hope you will like that.
Aimee