So, some of you may know that a while ago, I tried to lose a pretty substantial amount of weight. This became an attempt at a lifestyle change... and for a while, it was working.
Even now, I still pay attention to what I eat and try my best to keep on top of it... but life is crazy, and it's easy to find excuses not to do something.
Well, my friend Tiffany approached me Sunday about her goal to lose weight before her birthday. I suggested we try to do a sort of Biggest Loser competition, to keep each other motivated. We had tried it once before, but neither of us kept the other accountable... so now we're giving it another go. Except, this time, we're going to work at it.
Our plan is to get together at least 3 nights out of the week and work out together, that way if we don't do it the rest of the week, we'll at least be working out 3 every week. It'll be perfect, because we've also been trying to figure out times when we can get together outside of work and hang out. We watch the same shows and like the same music and all that stuff... so this is a good way for us to have a chance to talk and what not. Certain days we'll get together and work out, and then watch one of our shows. Other times we'll get together and work out with a DVD, and then play something like Just Dance, to get a bit of cardio in as well as just... play a video game (lol).
We don't go to the same gym, but we've also decided what we can do is set times to go to our respective gyms, then get together after our work out for a drink or something, to talk. This way, we'll be held accountable for going to the gym once or twice a week, as well.
Anyway, this is just an update to say I AM GOING TO TRY THIS AGAIN. Huzzah.
Once more, with GUSTO.
The Genius that is Childhood (Redux)
We may even go as far as to use them to hang coats on... someday...
technobabble
I am making my first blog post from my phone. I found an app that will work with Blogger. I'm still figurin it out, but supposedly I can set a Hyperlink, post pictures fairly easily, stuff like that. It could be very useful, once I figure it all out
Is this where I put tags? Still learning still learning
You never really realize they're listening
I used to sing this song to Camden when he was younger, during diaper changing time. He loved it, would always laugh and clap or whatever.
I was feeling a tad nostalgic, seeing as he's pretty much potty trained now, and figured hey... if it calmed Camden down during changing time, maybe it would calm Andersen down, too. So, I sang it to Andersen and it worked! But, the best part was, I got as far as "and he said to the man running the stand, HEY!" and Camden said "BUM BUM BUM, got any GRAPES?" I sang further "The man said:" and he said "Nope, just lemonade." It was so awesome.
Later I asked him what a duck says, and he said "quack quack!" But when I asked him what a duck says at a lemonade stand, he said "got any grapes?" XD It's so cool to see that kind of stuff stick with them! And it makes you realize just how much they pick up. Camden even asked me where my car was, because I had driven my mom's car that morning. The kid picks up on stuff.
Now if I could just get him to stop referring to the church as "Lauren's house"... lol.
They think they're sooo smart...
And nine times out of ten, they are. Children will almost always be able to outsmart me... but shh. Don't tell them that. It could be the end of me if they find out.
Last Wednesday, I had an interesting conversation with Bria. Because loose food attracts bugs, the kids are not allowed to eat anywhere but on the mat, and at the table. So, when Bria was running around with her chips, I told her she needed to put them away, or sit down at the table until she was finished with them. I then proceeded to tend to Andersen. After a bit, Bria walked up to me and presented me - quite proudly, actually - with an empty baggie.
"I'm done, I'm done!" she said. I told her that was great, that she needed to throw the baggie away and then she could go play. That was that.
Fast forward to Sunday morning. I got to work early and decided to clean out my purse and, lo and behold beneath the candy, and the receipts, and my wallet, and all the other stuff in my bag, there was a layer of tortilla chips.
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| Near the end of my attempted clean up, I figured I should take a picture. |
The Genius that is Childhood
I am always blown away by the child's ability to think outside the box. As a (sort of) writer, I kind of pride myself in the ability to see uses for things that aren't conventionally thought of, but as good as I am (narcissistic? maybe a bit), I will never be as good as my kiddos.
They seriously surpass me time and time again in the out of the box thinking. The other day, Andersen - yes, you read that right, Andersen - used one of their push carts as steps to climb up on the coffee table. Of course, looking at the thing I never saw it as steps. Now, that's all I can see!! Like one of those pictures that's either a wine glass or two people looking at each other. Once someone points out one, it's extremely difficult to see the other.
One of my favorite examples of this was the sock pegss. I have a problem with socks when watching the kids. They always seem to get separated and lost and I can never find them. Sometimes I'll have the presence of mind to take the socks off when I take the shoes off, but my kids are at the point where they can take their own shoes off all by themselves, thank you very much. Super duper!
Problem with that is, they don't always announce when they're taking their shoes off, and the socks tend to come off 5 minutes apart from each other. -_- I'll talk to them ahead of time and tell them they need to keep their socks on, which they of course respond to with "Ok Wowen ok". And then their socks always manage to "fall off" sometime later.
So I've been trying to find a way to keep them together, so they don't get lost... and recently I mentioned to Asher that if he wanted to take his socks off, he had to give them to me or put them up somewhere together. Well, he took his socks off and left them on the ground, and Camden saw them, picked them up, and stuck each one on one of the coat pegs by the back door. And they stayed there all day.
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| He did this all by himself. There was no "look at me!" or "help Ms. Wowen!" He just climbed up and put them there himself. |
Kids man. Kids.
NaNo Update!!
It's been a while since I said anything about NaNo. In fact, it's been since November 1st... and that post was scheduled and written ahead of time so in reality, it's been longer than that. XD
Basically, it's going well. I'm having to struggle to catch up on the weekends, but hopefully this week (week 3) will go much better (not as many extra curriculars). As far as word count goes, I'm at about 30K. The 2K a word day thing is working out pretty well... except for when I fall behind and end up having to pen something like 6-8K in one day, lol.
As far as story, I'm fairly impressed. It's just a first draft, so don't expect to read it in entirety (save for like, one person), before the second draft is written. But things seem to be moving along quite well. The uncovering of the conspiracy - which is what I was most worried about when coming up with this idea - is coming along swimmingly. And my writing itself has improved.
My characters have decided to take on a life of their own. When crafting them, I had a small idea about each of them, but each has changed in interesting ways. Astrid is far more mentally unstable than I thought she would be, Colin is an introvert, Kara's slightly immature, Caleb has a stick up his butt and I absolutely detest Haylie. Even Samuel is a bit of a jerk, but he hasn't been in the spotlight as much as the others have. He may change once I get to know him better.
My "villains" have yet to really be in the spotlight, but I like the Reckoning, at least. They seem to be coming along just as solid as Team CHECK. As for Nicolae, still not sure about him. He'll probably be something that needs a lot more revision in the second draft. As of right now, he's a pretty bad dude but I don't know a lot about him. I'm hoping that will become clear later on but, I don't really know.
The most fun part about the whole thing is finding connections in the conspiracy along with the characters. There are a few things they uncovered that I didn't know they would uncover (if you're a writer, that will make sense. If not, well, just smile and nod your head lol), and I got seriously excited over some of them. One of which was the introduction of a character from my last NaNo. O_O
As stressful as it has been at times, I'm having a LOT of fun putting this all together. One thing is for certain, though... I'm more than halfway done with the 50K goal and I'm nowhere near half way through the story. The game hasn't even started yet.
I'm really excited to see how this turns out, once it's all said and done. I feel like reading On Writing right before starting this was a really good step towards getting serious about it.
If you want to check up a bit more on my progress, feel free to do so! Here is my NaNoWriMo profile. The synopsis is updated, and there's a small excerpt!! :D