Weight Watching

Sorry...this isn't a post about Cate...at least not directly.

I didn't gain an unhealthy amount of weight with Cate, but I did gain a little more than I would've liked, mostly due to the fact that my activity was limited when I started having low fluid levels and then when I was overdue, I pretty much just threw caution to the wind and ate whatever I wanted for 9 days.

After Cate was born, I lost a lot of weight immediately and continued to lose until I hit a plateau at about 5 and a half weeks.

Which brings me to last Monday, when I joined Weight Watchers. After doing a lot of diet research and talking to a few people, I learned that WW has a way for nursing moms to track points and lose weight safely and successfully.

After one week on their program I lost 6.6 pounds. And the best part is that it doesn't even feel like a diet. I can eat things I like. It just makes you more aware of what you're putting in your body. We even went out a couple of times this week.

I still have a little under 20 pounds to go until I'm back where I was pre-Cate...which isn't bad at all. And I know some weight won't come off until I'm done nursing. I'm not someone who obsesses about weight either...I don't want anyone to think that. In fact, we didn't even own a scale until this fall. My clothes have always just seemed to fit without really trying to do anything. And I'm a pretty active person.

But today I'm just simply excited that this is working and wanted to celebrate my success. My pre-pregnancy jeans are just around the corner :-)

~Melody

Milestone Day/Night

Normally there wouldn't be anything spectacular about my alarm going off at 5am. That's pretty much when I start my day (although during my 9th month of pregnancy and during summer break, I sleep much later), but on any given workday, that's when I'm up. We've got Cate on a great schedule for when I go back to work with her first feeding being at 5am...so naturally, my alarm should be going off then to feed her. But what was great about today's 5am buzzer, was that Cate had been sound asleep in her bed since 9:30 last night! We have slept through the night people! Now hopefully she'll repeat this again tonight and the night after and the night after....
And she still went back down after the 5am feeding until 8 and then proceeded to fall asleep in her papasan seat until we left for church.
She was a little more awake after church so we donned her in her Nike apparel (one of her runner mommy and daddy's favorite little outfits) and decided to take advantage of a break in the rain and put our new zoo passes to use.

Here we are at the zoo. She slept most of the time, but it was still fun. We had the place pretty much to ourselves. My favorite was a monkey (not sure what kind) that had a 3 week old baby. The baby pretty much just held onto its mom while she swung from branch to branch and ate. It could nurse whenever it needed to. If only it were that easy for humans. :-) We can't wait for Cate to be awake longer in the day to enjoy the zoo and plan on making several trips there this spring and summer.

~Melody :-)

My Mommy Haircut

I went and did it...I got my hair chopped off. It had pretty much been living in a ponytail for most of the last 7 weeks, so I figured I might as well get it cut so I didn't have to worry about it. It was a good 4-5 inches off. They also thinned it a little. Needless to say, it was a lot of hair. It's layered and really cute (at least I think so and this picture doesn't quite do it justice, but it'll have to work for now). Now hopefully I can get it to look the same way again on my own.
~Melody :-)

Cate's First Easter (and Murphy's Law of Breastfeeding)

Sorry it's been a while since our last post. We've certainly been busy. This past weekend, we loaded up the car again and headed to Hudson to visit Melody's family for Easter. Cate was happy to wait on her tummy while we packed things up.
We left on Friday and had a very uneventful trip. Melody has discovered the Murphy's Law of breastfeeding though. Cate still has to eat every 3 hours during the day (but goes almost 6 at night), which means that on our trip to Hudson, we have to stop to feed her. So we pull into a parking lot (this time it happened to be Wendy's on both the trip there and back home) and pull into the very last back space. Sure enough, on both trips, someone pulled in right next to us while Cate was trying to eat. This also happened in the huge Cracker Barrel parking lot on the way home from Nashville. Oh well...it's what is best for Cate, so Melody has given up caring in those situations. But back to our trip...
Cate enjoyed hanging out with all of her family. She especially loved reading the newspaper with grandpa. Melody loved that she didn't change a diaper all weekend. Eric or Nana usually took care of it while Melody caught up on some much needed mommy relaxation time.
Easter morning brought a basket with a book and Cate's favorite shaped pacifiers, a bunny from great-granny, and a "piece of money" from Nana and Grandpa. And other than Cate looking away from the camera (she was already sleepy...and proceeded to sleep through church), we did manage a good family pic before heading off to the service.
It's hard to believe that our little girl is 7 weeks old today. And that Melody returns to work 2 weeks from today. But for now, we're just enjoying the Cincinnati sunshine (it snowed Friday night when we got up there). We're definitely looking forward to Nana and Grandpa's move to Atlanta this summer. Even though they'll be a little farther away, it'll be much warmer when we go to visit.

~Eric and Melody

Cate is B-E-A-U-Tiful!

So today I took Cate to have her first professional pictures taken (aside from the one they took at the hospital). We went to the picture people and she was dressed in her Easter outfit. These are pictures of the pictures which is why they look a little fuzzy...but enjoy. We think they turned out pretty cute. :-)
~Melody :-)

Tech-Savvy Parents...sort of

It's amazing the things you purchase when you add a baby to your family. Our old video camera was a cheap one that Melody got when she went to England. Somewhere along the way it got dropped, ate some tapes, and quit working. So with Cate's arrival, we invested in a much better video camera and began using it in Nashville taking little video clips of her (Eric is a great videographer and photographer as he usually the one behind the lens). Now we're trying to figure out iMovie (Mel took a class in it a couple of summers ago, but hasn't used it since, so we're pretty much starting from scratch). Here is our first attempt at an iMovie (Eric gets the credit for this one). The picture quality isn't great...but it would take forever to load if we had it exactly as it will be when we burn it on a DVD (once we figure out how to use the DVD burner):


Hope you liked it! Enjoy and hopefully our little movies will get better as we get better at using iMovie.
~Eric and Melody

Cate's First Road Trip

We made it back from Nashville and Cate has officially earned her traveling wheels. We had a great trip down and despite a bus fire on 65 coming home that had us stuck in traffic for two and a half hours, we made it there and back with no baby issues.

Here are a few pictures from our trip:
This is Eric and Cate enjoying "tummy time" on the bed when we first checked into our hotel. The sink was the perfect place to give Cate a bath later that night.
While Daddy was at his conference, Cate and I took advantage of the gorgeous weather (it hit 70) and walked around downtown Nashville, taking in the sights. One day we went with her in the wearable baby front carrier and the other day she hung out in the stroller, where she spent most of her time like this:
So she missed some of the sights like Ryman Auditorium:
The replica of Fort Nashboro:
And the Tennessee Titans stadium, LP Field:
She was awake for dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe one night though, and she did a great job there. One couple asked to be moved when they were seated next to us and saw the stroller, but we showed them, as Cate was on her best behavior.

So now we're home, safe and sound. We'll be hitting the road again on Good Friday to head to Hudson in northeast Ohio to visit my family and introduce Cate to some more of my friends (our friends Jenny and Jimmy in Nashville loved meeting her). We're hoping that trip will be a repeat success. :-)

~Melody :-)

We're in Nashville

Cate went on her first road trip today. We are blessed that she is such a good baby. Eric has to be in Nashville until Thursday for a conference for work. Not wanting to leave Melody and Cate behind, they decided to tag along. Cate slept great in the car, slept through our lunch stop, and only woke up when we fed her and changed her at lunch (and to look out the car window for a bit while she was settling back down after our stop). She took in the sites of downtown Nashville from her stroller when we went out in search of dinner and fit perfectly in the hotel sink for a bath. It's nice to get away from snowy Ohio (it was 62 and sunny when we arrived this afternoon). Eric has meetings all day tomorrow, but Mom and Cate are planning to relax and maybe explore a little more of Nashville before we all meet up with our friends Jenny and Jimmy. We can't post pictures from here (we didn't want to risk losing the cord while we traveled), but we'll post some more Cate photos (including one of the bath in the sink) when we get home on Thursday evening (you might need to give us until Friday morning though). Please pray for our safe return and know that you're in our thoughts and prayers too.
~Eric and Melody

Time Flies...

...when you're having fun being a mommy! Cate turned 1 month old today! It's hard to believe that we've been at this parenting thing for a month now. She didn't come with an instruction manual, so we're just making it up as we go along and we're praying we get it right. Cate's checkup at the doctor went well today. She weighs 9 pounds 14 ounces now and has grown an inch. She's at the 50th percentile or higher in every category. And today she was especially happy that she didn't have to have any shots (next month will be a whole different story). So here are some recent pictures of Cate (you can always find more at our Shutterfly site: www.riggsfamilypictures.shutterfly.com or by clicking the Our Pictures link to the right). There's also a video at the bottom of Cate saying hello.
~Melody

Mom's One Month Checkup

At almost exactly this time one month ago, Eric and I went into the doctor's office only to be told to head to the hospital. Today's doctor visit was much different. I didn't mind being weighed this time (I've lost about 20 pounds since giving birth, and I haven't even started doing any exercising yet aside from a couple of walks with the dog). And I can quit the Motrin and Senekot regimen I've been on since giving birth. The best news though...my stitches have healed and I can start resuming some normal activities (like running and biking etc., as long as I start slow and work up to where I was pre-pregnancy). I can even swim or sit in the hot tub next week when we're in Nashville if I want!

So it's not like I'm going to jump right back into things...don't worry. Besides it's rainy and cold here and all I really want to do is snuggle with Cate on the couch and read. But it's just so nice to know that everything healed the way it was supposed to and that I can start progressing back towards normalcy. Cate's one month checkup is tomorrow and we're praying that things go just as well for her.

Speaking of which...here's your Cate picture for the day.....
She loves to sleep swaddled. :-)

~Melody

Daddy Daughter Time

I'm sitting here at the computer with Cate up against my chest in the baby carrier. Usually between 7 and 9, I take Cate for a little while so that her mommy can get some stuff done like take a shower, write a few emails and have some mommy time. She loves the break, and I love the time I get to spend with my daughter, even if she is a little fussy (We've dubbed these her fussy hours every night). I just can't get over how much I love this little girl, how blessed I am, and how much God is moving in me because of it. Even the tough stuff I enjoy because I know one day, she'll be gone. That's a hard thought to swallow, that one day, our little girl, who we will have raised through every step of her life will go on to do the same for he own children. But for now, I'll enjoy my daddy-daughter time, and echo the prayer of Rob Bell, "God, I can't believe I get to live this life."
- Papa E

Take your daughter to work

Yesterday was a teacher work day at school. So I figured that since there weren't any students around to pass on leftover flu germs to Cate, it would be a good day to take her up to meet the team of teachers I teach with (and who graciously put up with my complaining and whining each of the days that I was overdue and still at work). We got her dressed in her fleece hoodie outfit (a gift from a fellow language arts teacher) and her baby Uggs (courtesy of the other language arts teacher on my team). I think she looks pretty stinkin' cute. She was wide awake when we left and for about half of the car ride. But this is how she spent her visit... Oh well, they'll just have to see her pretty eyes and her smile another time.

~Melody :-)