I watched a little video on CNN.com this morning about a recent study comparing the long-term weight loss of women eating different types of breakfast. I won't comment on the scientific validity of the study (which seems a little shady), but I was intrigued by one thing. These are the sample breakfasts that the women were to eat:
Group 1:
Two slices of whole-grain bread
2 slices of cheese
3 pieces of deli meat
1 pat of butter
2 glasses of milk
1 cup of coffee
Group 2:
1 scrambled egg
3 pieces of bacon
1/2 pat of butter
1 glass of milk
1 cup of coffee
Group 1 was the clear weight-loss winner, by the way, but that's not my question. What I want to know is: what did the women in Group 2 do with their 1/2 pat of butter?
Monday, June 23, 2008
35 week update
"You can call yourself heavily pregnant now." (35 weeks)
I must say that this is *definitely* the news I've been waiting 35 weeks to hear. I can now officially associate the word "heavy" with myself. Fantastic. I'm sure that all pregnant women at this stage are relieved to finally know that they are heavy.
(this news comes courtesy of the pregnancy calendar that publishes the cute little picture on the left side of this page, in case you were interested)
I must say that this is *definitely* the news I've been waiting 35 weeks to hear. I can now officially associate the word "heavy" with myself. Fantastic. I'm sure that all pregnant women at this stage are relieved to finally know that they are heavy.
(this news comes courtesy of the pregnancy calendar that publishes the cute little picture on the left side of this page, in case you were interested)
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Goodbye Bride, Hello Mama
I just sold my wedding dress today.
I couldn't really decide what to do with my dress after the wedding last summer, so it's been hanging up in our bedroom ever since. Not quite wanting to spend the money to preserve it, yet unable to just trash it, I left it there to deal with later. My husband, however, had other ideas. Maybe it was the huge box that it took up all by itself when the movers packed it. Or maybe he's just not so sentimental about such things. In any case, he asked me to "do something with it" when we moved down here. Still not wanting to pay someone to fold it neatly into a box, I decided to sell it or donate it. After a couple months of craigslisting it, I finally got a buyer today. She's a nice girl about my age (and size, conveniently) from Maryland and she loved it when she tried it on. I'm happy to see it put to good use again. It really is a pretty dress...
So Matt and I were talking about it afterward, discussing the significance of the dress. "I didn't keep my tux from the wedding," he says, "so what's the big deal?" I tried to explain to him that somehow for the girl getting married, the dress is sort of symbolic of the fact that she is a bride. It's one of the first (and most agonized over) things that she'll pick out for the wedding, and it represents in some way her bride-ness, even after the fact. Fortunately, as I leave behind this particular symbol of being a bride, I can move seamlessly into a new phase of life: mommy-hood.
*Note: this is also the last of the major tasks that I wanted to accomplish prior to Elmo's arrival. He probably needs a few more weeks to cook, but he can come out any time now, as far as I'm concerned. :-)
I couldn't really decide what to do with my dress after the wedding last summer, so it's been hanging up in our bedroom ever since. Not quite wanting to spend the money to preserve it, yet unable to just trash it, I left it there to deal with later. My husband, however, had other ideas. Maybe it was the huge box that it took up all by itself when the movers packed it. Or maybe he's just not so sentimental about such things. In any case, he asked me to "do something with it" when we moved down here. Still not wanting to pay someone to fold it neatly into a box, I decided to sell it or donate it. After a couple months of craigslisting it, I finally got a buyer today. She's a nice girl about my age (and size, conveniently) from Maryland and she loved it when she tried it on. I'm happy to see it put to good use again. It really is a pretty dress...
So Matt and I were talking about it afterward, discussing the significance of the dress. "I didn't keep my tux from the wedding," he says, "so what's the big deal?" I tried to explain to him that somehow for the girl getting married, the dress is sort of symbolic of the fact that she is a bride. It's one of the first (and most agonized over) things that she'll pick out for the wedding, and it represents in some way her bride-ness, even after the fact. Fortunately, as I leave behind this particular symbol of being a bride, I can move seamlessly into a new phase of life: mommy-hood.
*Note: this is also the last of the major tasks that I wanted to accomplish prior to Elmo's arrival. He probably needs a few more weeks to cook, but he can come out any time now, as far as I'm concerned. :-)
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
I wonder...
...how many other people there are out there who, upon discovering a fruit fly crawling across the bathroom mirror, will lean in for a closer look before returning to their previous task, smiling confidently to themselves with the knowledge that "it's a boy."
Sunday, June 8, 2008
An Evening Out
News Alert: The Pannings were social not just once this week (which would have been a feat in and of itself, given our recent social calendar), but THREE times.
Thanks to Jodi, who put us in touch with some friends who recently moved here from her neck of the woods, we spent Wednesday night getting to know Lacy and Mark, and their kids. I am so thankful that we are getting to spend time not only with other adults, but with little kids, too. It should help to make the transition a little bit easier for us when the time comes. Unfortunately, baby Julian is such a sweet and quiet baby (at 8 weeks old) that Matt seemed to think that's how all baby (boys, at least) behaved. Haha.
Friday night, we drove out to Maryland to visit an old friend, Mark Giszczak, who is working on his PhD at Catholic University. He was having a party/barbecue with a nice mix of old and new friends, including his fiancee. It was nice to chat with Mark and catch up a bit, as well as to meet Colleen. Hopefully we'll get to see more of them in the coming months/years.
Saturday, our societal forays continued as we met up with Lacy & Co. at the home of another Steubenville connection. Thanks this time to the wonders of Facebook, which alerted Theresa to the presence of people in the area who were friends with her buddy Laura back in Steubenville. Truthfully, I only really knew Laura for about a week as we served in Young Apostles together (when I was 17), but she is now friends with Jodi also, so we still have some connection. Anyway, Theresa and her family have been in Ashburn for a couple of years, making them the most established among us. Lacy and Theresa both have a 2 year-old and a <6 month-old, so their mommy-hood is a bit more established than mine, but it was great to connect with some other young Catholic moms. Both of their littlest ones are boys, so Elmo will have some playmates for sure as they get a bit bigger. :-)
Whew! After all that social interaction (funny.... because Matt and I are definitely not the talkers of the bunch in any of these settings, but it was social, nonetheless), we've spent the rest of the weekend hiding from the "extreme heat warnings" that have been in effect for a few days. We did finally break down and turn on the A/C, though, which has made life more bearable.
We also made some "major" progress in readying our home for the baby this week. We bought a mattress for the crib, Matt fixed the crib (again... the first attempt at fixing it turned out to not support the weight of the mattress...small problem?), and I sold my old desk so that we now have more space in the second bedroom. Which is good, because we are rapidly accumulating more and more baby stuff. Whee!!! I should start washing and organizing the clothes so that they're usable when needed. Add it to the list...
Thanks to Jodi, who put us in touch with some friends who recently moved here from her neck of the woods, we spent Wednesday night getting to know Lacy and Mark, and their kids. I am so thankful that we are getting to spend time not only with other adults, but with little kids, too. It should help to make the transition a little bit easier for us when the time comes. Unfortunately, baby Julian is such a sweet and quiet baby (at 8 weeks old) that Matt seemed to think that's how all baby (boys, at least) behaved. Haha.
Friday night, we drove out to Maryland to visit an old friend, Mark Giszczak, who is working on his PhD at Catholic University. He was having a party/barbecue with a nice mix of old and new friends, including his fiancee. It was nice to chat with Mark and catch up a bit, as well as to meet Colleen. Hopefully we'll get to see more of them in the coming months/years.
Saturday, our societal forays continued as we met up with Lacy & Co. at the home of another Steubenville connection. Thanks this time to the wonders of Facebook, which alerted Theresa to the presence of people in the area who were friends with her buddy Laura back in Steubenville. Truthfully, I only really knew Laura for about a week as we served in Young Apostles together (when I was 17), but she is now friends with Jodi also, so we still have some connection. Anyway, Theresa and her family have been in Ashburn for a couple of years, making them the most established among us. Lacy and Theresa both have a 2 year-old and a <6 month-old, so their mommy-hood is a bit more established than mine, but it was great to connect with some other young Catholic moms. Both of their littlest ones are boys, so Elmo will have some playmates for sure as they get a bit bigger. :-)
Whew! After all that social interaction (funny.... because Matt and I are definitely not the talkers of the bunch in any of these settings, but it was social, nonetheless), we've spent the rest of the weekend hiding from the "extreme heat warnings" that have been in effect for a few days. We did finally break down and turn on the A/C, though, which has made life more bearable.
We also made some "major" progress in readying our home for the baby this week. We bought a mattress for the crib, Matt fixed the crib (again... the first attempt at fixing it turned out to not support the weight of the mattress...small problem?), and I sold my old desk so that we now have more space in the second bedroom. Which is good, because we are rapidly accumulating more and more baby stuff. Whee!!! I should start washing and organizing the clothes so that they're usable when needed. Add it to the list...
Monday, June 2, 2008
Out for a walk
I made a tactical error today. Or rather, a series of them.
First, I didn't get up until 7:30am. See, if I get up at 7:00, then I have time to eat breakfast, get dressed, and walk the 1.5 miles to Mass. That way, by the time I get home from Mass, I'm done with my exercise for the day before it gets too hot/humid out. If I sleep in until 7:30, though, I don't have time to walk and I have to drive there. Which is fine, it just means that my walk will have to wait until later.
My second blunder was giving in to my usual morning tiredness. With no urgent appointments or demands on my time, I sometimes succumb to the exhaustion you might expect from a pregnant woman who can't manage to sleep through the night to save her life... and I take a nap. Or in this case, sit and read for a couple of hours. Thoroughly delightful, mind you, but a mistake I would later regret.
I did dredge up the discipline to clean the apartment before eating lunch (after all, I had to do something to "earn" my next meal, right?), but then puttered around for awhile before I actually put on my shoes to go for a walk. The problem was, by this point it was 1:30pm and approaching 80 outside. Too hot for me to get away with wearing long pants, which meant going out looking semi-ridiculous in "athletic" type clothing for a walk. Funny, I didn't use to feel ridiculous in those clothes (not completely, anyway). But now that I've got a 4-pound little munchkin crawling around in my belly, it's a bit different. Just a few weeks ago, I could go for a walk in jeans and a t-shirt and I actually had guys honking at me when they drove past (true story... happened at least 3 times). Now, I'm more likely to have them offer me a ride home because I must be lost and miserable (also a true story... but at least then I was walking on a road with no sidewalk and where a pedestrian of any variety must have appeared out of place).
Despite how I looked (don't even bother trying to imagine it... I tried to take a picture, but it just looked silly), I felt pretty good. I have this one pair of athletic shoes that I got before going into my freshman year of high school and they are still my absolute favorite pair of shoes to go walking/running in. Just putting them on my feet gives me a burst of energy. And so I walked for a couple of miles and felt ok upon coming home. So I folded the laundry and did the ironing (including cleaning the calc out of the anti-calc iron). And somewhere along the way, it all caught up with me. I had zero energy left, and it was approaching dinnertime. Sigh.
I need to remind myself that during the summer, it's best to do all things requiring energy in the morning and to relax in the afternoon. I think the next 8 weeks will be much more bearable if I can keep this in mind.
In case you were worried about the state of dinner: I resisted the urge to begin cooking as soon as my husband walked through the door (half an hour before I expected him). Instead, I got a snack, took a shower, and relaxed for a while before returning to work and cooking a much simpler (but still yummy) meal than I had originally planned. All was not lost. :-)
First, I didn't get up until 7:30am. See, if I get up at 7:00, then I have time to eat breakfast, get dressed, and walk the 1.5 miles to Mass. That way, by the time I get home from Mass, I'm done with my exercise for the day before it gets too hot/humid out. If I sleep in until 7:30, though, I don't have time to walk and I have to drive there. Which is fine, it just means that my walk will have to wait until later.
My second blunder was giving in to my usual morning tiredness. With no urgent appointments or demands on my time, I sometimes succumb to the exhaustion you might expect from a pregnant woman who can't manage to sleep through the night to save her life... and I take a nap. Or in this case, sit and read for a couple of hours. Thoroughly delightful, mind you, but a mistake I would later regret.
I did dredge up the discipline to clean the apartment before eating lunch (after all, I had to do something to "earn" my next meal, right?), but then puttered around for awhile before I actually put on my shoes to go for a walk. The problem was, by this point it was 1:30pm and approaching 80 outside. Too hot for me to get away with wearing long pants, which meant going out looking semi-ridiculous in "athletic" type clothing for a walk. Funny, I didn't use to feel ridiculous in those clothes (not completely, anyway). But now that I've got a 4-pound little munchkin crawling around in my belly, it's a bit different. Just a few weeks ago, I could go for a walk in jeans and a t-shirt and I actually had guys honking at me when they drove past (true story... happened at least 3 times). Now, I'm more likely to have them offer me a ride home because I must be lost and miserable (also a true story... but at least then I was walking on a road with no sidewalk and where a pedestrian of any variety must have appeared out of place).
Despite how I looked (don't even bother trying to imagine it... I tried to take a picture, but it just looked silly), I felt pretty good. I have this one pair of athletic shoes that I got before going into my freshman year of high school and they are still my absolute favorite pair of shoes to go walking/running in. Just putting them on my feet gives me a burst of energy. And so I walked for a couple of miles and felt ok upon coming home. So I folded the laundry and did the ironing (including cleaning the calc out of the anti-calc iron). And somewhere along the way, it all caught up with me. I had zero energy left, and it was approaching dinnertime. Sigh.
I need to remind myself that during the summer, it's best to do all things requiring energy in the morning and to relax in the afternoon. I think the next 8 weeks will be much more bearable if I can keep this in mind.
In case you were worried about the state of dinner: I resisted the urge to begin cooking as soon as my husband walked through the door (half an hour before I expected him). Instead, I got a snack, took a shower, and relaxed for a while before returning to work and cooking a much simpler (but still yummy) meal than I had originally planned. All was not lost. :-)
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