The Working Mom

Zach was throwing up most of the night last night. When he wasn’t throwing up, I spent the time trying to fall back to sleep, a wasted effort. So I’m really short on energy today – and brain power. While I was driving Rachel to her day-camp, Sam stayed with Zach back at the house. In my head I was mentally listing off what I needed to do that day, how I would juggle it all with Zach staying home. On one mental item, I thought “we should feed him the BRAT diet today – I think that’s what they usually have you do with a kid that is recovering from vomiting, etc. Ok. BRAT diet… Bananas… Rice… Apples? No Applesauce, right…? And something starting with a “T”. What the hell is it. Tofu?….Turkey?…  Tepid water… How many foods could possibly start with the letter “T” – what the hell is it??

I kind of gave up thinking about it and figured I’d just look it up on Google when I got home. So I get home, Zach asks for some toast, I say sure. I’m making him the toast and while I’m getting it all together I start thinking again… What the hell is the “T” word??? GAH!! Why can’t I remember what it is?!

Yeah.

It wasn’t until I finished making it and handed it to him… TOAST!

Oy. It’s going to be a long day.

This is the last of the shots I had stored up from our vacation. My back was doing a bit better today, but then I was cleaning something on the floor and it got tweaked again. With the exception of one day, I have been posting a picture every day – but not sure I’ll be able to keep up now. We’ll see.

Good thing I still have a just a few more photographs from vacation to post. At the moment I’m completely bed bound. I threw my back out on Friday, it was just about tolerable until last night (Saturday). I didn’t sleep well, was in pain for most of the night that just got worse and worse. Thankfully there’s an “After Hours” doctor office nearby, so even though it was a Sunday morning, I was able to get in and seen by a doctor (or at least a nurse practitioner as the case may be). Lots of anti-inflamatory meds, pain meds, and muscle relaxers, and my back is again just tolerable on pain. I’m not quite sure how I’ll survive tomorrow. I still have tons of work piled up from vacation, so it’s not like I can just dose up on pain meds and be all set. They totally knocked me out today. But even just sitting doesn’t ease the back pain.

We have desperately been trying to find healthy snacks for the kids in our house. Thankfully, my daughter willingly eats veggies with some salad dressing for a snack after school. My son is not so easy – we have a difficult time getting him to eat anything healthy. One thing both of them really like are the Simply… Go-Gurt yogurt tubes. These snacks are low fat, a good source of calcium and contain no high fructose corn syrup or artificial flavors. They come in two flavors: Strawberry and Mixed Berry.

The fact that the yogurt comes in tubes is especially convenient because my kids never seem to sit down to do anything. Even when they eat. They take a bite, run around the room. Take another bite. Snacks that can be taken on the go are snacks that are more likely to be finished!

We received a “Simplify Your Life” prize pack from Yoplait through MyBlogSpark. It included a coupon for a free sample of Simply… Go-Gurt, a pocket Etch a Sketch, weekly planner and a seat back organizer. Well, I picked up our Simply… Go-Gurt sample on Friday morning and it barely made it through the weekend. The kids devour this stuff. (To be honest, we normally buy this stuff in bulk from Costco! LOL!)

So, I have a few things to offer you. First, at the bottom of this post, you’ll see a graphic. The first 30 people to click on the “Try it Free” tab will receive a coupon for a free package of Simply… Go-Gurt. (After the 30 coupons are claimed – there will be a coupon for $1.10 off coupon). On the “Weigh In” tab, you can read what other people are saying about Simply… Go-Gurt and give your thoughts. Or spread the coupon love and click the “Spread the savings” to include a coupon on your site or tell others about the coupon.

HOW TO ENTER THE “SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE” PRIZE PACK GIVEAWAY

1) To enter the contest for the “Simplify Your Life” prize pack giveaway, please leave a comment on this post and share a wholesome snacking tip that works with your kids. (Required. Value: 1 entry.)

Extra Optional Entries
2) Tweet about this post. (and leave a comment here telling me you did). Click here to tweet about the post now. (Optional. Value: 1 entry.)

3) If you have a blog or website, link to this post. (and leave a comment here telling me you did) (Optional. Value: 2 entries.)

Contest ends April 21st, 2010 at 10pm MST. There is no purchase necessary to enter the contest. I will be using random.org to choose the winner. I’ll contact the winner via email, and he/she will have 48 hours to respond. After 48 hours, if I don’t receive a response, another winner will be chosen.

*Disclosure note: The coupon, prize pack, and giveaway have all been provided by Yoplait through MyBlogSpark.

Sam’s company recently switched up their health insurance offerings. Previously, we’ve stuck with the same plan or something similar for the last 5+ years. It was pretty straightforward, easy to understand. I was never happy with the insurance company itself, though. They seemed to reject claims on a regular basis without cause, you’d call them up and then they’d “realize their mistake” and pay for the claim. For the number of times this happened, I really became suspicious that they were just hoping you’d give up and pay the claim yourself rather than following up with them every single time. Sometimes it became tempting to do so, but I just couldn’t on principle – figuring that’s probably exactly what they wanted.

In any case, that plan is not even being offered anymore. The two choices we were given were another plan similar to what we had – but with a higher premium (and a smaller selection of doctors to chose from!) or one of these “Health Savings Account” (HSA). My first instinct was to turn down the HSA. I just couldn’t imagine how that could ever be better than the standard plan we were used to going with. But his company gave two key incentives: they gave you a credit in the HSA and the premium was quite a bit cheaper than the other plan. As well, the selection of doctors from the HSA was much wider.

So I figured, the best thing to do would be to run the numbers. First we calculated out how much it would cost if we went to the doctor’s 10x a year and then 20x a year. And in both cases the HSA was less expensive. So then I downloaded our actual claims for the past year. Figuring that we would probably be about the same. Meticulously combed through each claim and sorted them for how we would have been charged if we had been under each of the new plans. Again, the HSA ended up being cheaper. In truth – the difference between the two almost always equaled the delta of lower premium and that HSA credit the company gives. If it wasn’t for that – the two plans would have been almost neck in neck.

But it’s crazy how confusing this all is. I wonder how many people spend that many days agonizing over the decision, and then actually creating a spreadsheet of claims from the previous year – recalculating the charge on each one based on what would be charged under the new plans just to see what the difference would have been.

I really hate how difficult that needs to be, and even more than that, I hate that in this country employers are the ones that decide on the fate of your health care. I doubt his company has our family’s health interest in mind when they make these decisions. They’re going to do what makes the most business sense. It doesn’t belong in their hands.

For the past few months, I’ve been doing a pretty good job of maintaining my weight loss. I relaxed and ate fairly healthy and comfortably. I kept an eye on my weight more to make sure things were staying where they were supposed to. The lowest it got down to was 127.6 – but would usually average around 130. That’s right around where I should be. 125 is the lowest I can really go. But more recently the average of where it’s fluctuated has been 131…132… It’s not a lot, but I’m going to track calories again until it goes down a few pounds.

I still think MyFoodDiary.com is great, but I want something more simple. I know that fats and carbs play a role, but what I found to be the most significant issue was plain old calories. (It’s important to note this will be different for different people – and even for me, there was a time I was more concerned with carbs than anything else. Right now I think I have the carbs under control – but really just want some help watching the straight calories). So I’m going to give that “Lose It” (free) iPhone app a try. I’ve heard people rave about it – and if just watching calories is what you need to do – then this program seems pretty good. For the foods that it has in the database, it does include additional nutritional info (Fat, Cholesterol, Sodium, Carbs, Protein). But entering in your own custom foods doesn’t entail a long form to fill out. Just enter the name of the food, the serving size, and the number of calories. Done. This is perfect for what I want to do right now. (An additional note: For those people that want to track those other items, the simplicity of Lose It probably isn’t a good thing as I could not see a way to enter that additional nutritional data in for custom foods if I wanted to) figured it out: you can track these other nutrients, you have to just turn that feature on if you want it.

Anyway. Back on the wagon…

If you’d like to try Lose It too, here’s the link on iTunes. (It’s free)

Why do all the parenting magazines I get focus on food presentation? As, if I make the carrot look like a caterpillar, my kid will suddenly be interested in eating it.

REALLY? I mean does any kid really fall for that? Mine doesn’t. I’m so desperate to get Zach to eat vegetables, that I even bought that book Deceptively Delicious. Even if he can’t see the vegetables, even if can’t taste the vegetables, he still somehow always knows when they’re there. It’s like he has Veg-dar or something. If he sees so much as a microscopic green parsley leaf in his food he has to pick it out. (oh, and whine about it, too)

How did I end up with a kid that hates vegetables this much? I love vegetables. I’m not exaggerating – I could sit and eat a head of lettuce, just like that, with no dressing. Just pick off the leaves and munch them like they were potato chips. (Spaghetti Squash may be the only vegetable I really don’t like).

But then the parenting magazines will take things too far. They’ll make cupcakes look like little turkeys for Thanksgiving.

REALLY??? This is one thing that doesn’t need to be dressed up. We don’t have any problems getting the kids to eat cupcakes. While it may be FUN to dress up a cupcake to look like a turkey, it doesn’t need to be done, he will eat it anyway, and my time is probably better spent trying to make the turkey look like a cupcake so he’ll eat that. (He’s not big on meat either. I honestly don’t know how he survives.)

As I posted on Twitter – I told Zach if he ate asparagus, it would make his pee smell. He thought that would be really cool. It almost worked. In the end, he chickened out.

I think what we need is more Popeye’s. I remember as a kid, watching Popeye cartoons, I was encouraged to eat spinach. Of course, I don’t know why. It’s not like I really wanted to look like Popeye. Zach does like that “party in my tummy” song – it so cracks me up. (If you go to that link, and get the song stuck in your head, you can thank me later) But it’s not enough. I think the real solution is that we need more vegetarian super heroes! (and less turkey cupcakes!) Captain Cucumber saves the day!!!

Or maybe not.

I’m sure this post is going to come with a fair amount of “I told you so!!”s but here I go. I haven’t been able to run for about two months now. I kept putting it off, work was extremely hectic and my knees had started to bother me. At first I thought the knee pain was related to a new migraine-prevention medicine I had recently started taking, but as far as I can tell, it’s unrelated. I kept waiting for my knees to feel better, I took motrin, it didn’t help. After a few weeks I finally caved in and called the doctor.

So it would seem I have tendinitis in my knees. She gave me some kind of anti-inflamatory cream (?!), a print-out of hard to read, hard to understand (the point of) “exercises”, told me to put some heat on it and sent me on my way. The cream you’re supposed to put on 4x a day. Which is ridiculous. Who remembers to do something 4x a day?? And a cream?? How is a cream I put on my skin going to penetrate through the cartilage of my knee and make this better?? And the exercises? Aside from the fact that I can barely read the print-out, I really don’t see how they’re going to make my knees feel better. From what I can tell in the picture (which is easier to see than the writing) it has you do things like: Sit in a chair, kick your leg forward and then back. Repeat 3 sets of 75 reps. (I’m not exaggerating on the repetitions – and that’s just ONE of the exercises!! There’s 6 more on the page like it.). As far as heat goes… do you realize how difficult it is to keep a SQUARE flat heating pad on a bent knee? WHY don’t they make a heating pad specifically designed for your knee?? I know they have those Therma-care heating pads for knees, but I think they work out to be $4 each and I would need two of them for both of my knees, every day for who-knows-how long.

So the short story is that I’m thinking I’m going to be dealing with knee pain for awhile. We’re also suspicious that the running probably had something to do with this in the first place. So… yeah. No more running for me for a good long while. If ever. I’m happy that the pain is only when I bend it so I can keep doing my other exercise classes (like Hip Hop Hustle and was going to start Turbo Kick this week too). And the bonus is that since I can’t bend down so easily anymore, I’ve had to get Zach to learn how to put his shoes on by himself… which really isn’t such a bad thing!!

(Ironic how I was running to be healthy and instead it caused me to be injured. I think I’ve mentioned before my love-hate (well, more hate) relationship with exercise? This is a good example of why that is… Something that is good for you shouldn’t cause you PAIN! At least Hip Hop Hustle is still fun and hasn’t killed me yet! LOL!)