Heart Rates, Forrest Gump, Castle Cakes & Husbands

Happy Birthday, Husband! I hope he has a good birthday. He recently started reading this blog and LIKES it. Wow, what a compliment! He never read the old blog because he refused to get a myspace. The only questionable thing is that he says I'm so funny and entertaining. Most of the time I'm not trying to be funny and entertaining in the blog, so I must either be funnier than I think or I'm really boring in person. Let me just take the compliment and run with it - do NOT overanalyze.

Miss J is really digging her push toy (if you're on Facebook, I posted a video of it a few days ago). She practically runs with the thing - she hasn't really perfected the turning concept, so she runs into everything at Mach 2. Or she gets so overeager she topples the toy and herself. But when she really gets going, I think of Forrest Gump. Remember that scene where he has the leg braces and starts running, and the braces fall off? Yep, I have a feeling that's how Julia's going to learn to walk. She'll be going full speed ahead with that push toy, throw it aside, and then just run like the wind! I would never, ever yell, "Run, Julia, RUN!" to get her to try to do it. Noooooooooo....

Miss J and I played catch today. We set a few feet from each other. I'd roll a ball toward her. She'd pick it up, do an overhead arm motion with a spike, and the ball would bounce toward me. We played for about 10 minutes. It was so cute! I really think I'm going to like the toddler phase. I know it will definitely have its frustrations, but it is so refreshing compared to 8 hours of screaming in a day for her first 4 months of life. That was pure torture.

Miss J has moved up to the toddler menu at daycare. Considering she insists on feeding herself, and - well - baby food is pretty hard for her to feed herself, they've decided to move her on up to a different diet. She's still on formula. Only one of the workers can get her to take her bottle really well, and she's been on vacation this week. So this week is kind of low for formula at daycare, but solids are going great (as long as she can feed herself)! Since we're supposed to keep track of her calories, it gets hard with 'real' food. With baby food it's easy to know that half a jar of sweet potatoes & turkey is 60 calories. The upside is that if we can get her on more solids, that will be a good hurdle to overcome. We still have to work on sippy cups and transitioning to whole milk, but at least we're making progress on more solid foods. And the toddler diet they serve is really varied. She'll be exposed to a lot of different foods, and I take that as a really good thing. We got the May menu for the lunches and 3 snacks each day. Yes, they choreograph 3 small meals and a big lunch for each day. And I didn't see a whole lot of repeats. She'll be getting teriyaki chicken with broccoli for lunch one day, and the next will be getting fried rice and egg with veggies. I'm stoked for her! Yesterday she got mandarin oranges and cheese (they also served something with peanut butter, but she didn't get that). Today she got veggies, pears, cheese and half a banana. They are so surprised that she's eating SO much solid food considering how little she eats of baby food and formula. The kicker is that she must be able to feed herself. She only has two teeth, and that makes it kind of interesting, to say the least, when she won't let you mash the food.

S and I have this crazy idea to make Miss J a castle cake for her birthday. I blame Leigh Ann and watching too many episodes of Food Network's cake challenges. As if two people who have never used fondant or icing implements will be able to make the masterpiece that's shown on the box!!! Yeah right. After I bought the castle cake set, which says "everything to make the castle cake is in the box," I discovered that you need about 12 things that AREN'T in the box. I have been advised by Rebecca to do a trial run. If all else fails, we'll just get a Costco cake because I have a feeling S and I will be up all night before the party messing with this dang cake & then end up going to Costco anyway.

Got my heart rate monitor! I'm so excited. I did a trial run. On flat surfaces my HR was 110-115. On slight hills it went up to about 125-130. On the big hill it got up to 150. If I jogged, it went up to 160-170.

Now I get to program at what rate it will beep at me.

Target heart rate = 220 - age (30) = 190

Moderate intensity exercise = 55% - 70% of target heart rate

This means I need to keep my heart rate between 105 - 133 while exercising. Seeing as that I didn't dip below 110 on my walk, I don't think this will be a problem. I'll program the lower number to be 116. So if my heart rate goes below 116, it will beep at me. That will indicate I need to pick up the pace!

Weigh-in is tomorrow. I'm excited and dreading it all at the same time. For the most part, I stayed within my points since Monday. The weekend was bad because of all that Mexican food I ate on Saturday. So I think I did okay, which is exciting. But a part of me is dreading it in case the numbers didn't move.

Hasta manana.