Mommy Needs Coffee

...is what my brand-new mug says! Thanks to the Jose family for letting my mug say what I feel pretty much every second of every day!

So anyway.

Sunday night was a great night! A bunch of my Yelp friends got together at Crop Bistro (one of my favorite restaurants in Cleveland) for their Sunday Supper. The concept is pretty awesome. Taken from their website:

Sunday Supper at Crop is a tradition carried over from Chef Steve’s former restaurant in Vermont. After a particularly busy weekend at the Mist Grill, Steve found himself preparing for Sunday service with a partially depleted larder. Rather than frantically trying to convince his purveyors to make special Sunday deliveries, Steve decided to flex his creative muscle and revise his standard menu to incorporate the ingredients he had at hand. The result? A bountiful three-course, family-style dinner that changes from week to week (and sometimes, even during the course of service!).

Relaxed and friendly, we love Sunday Suppers at Crop. Not only are they a great value for our guests, but they allow our staff’s creativity to take flight, resulting in special, one-of-a-kind meals that are as memorable as they are delicious.

All you need to do is choose your entree from the day’s choices, and we’ll take care of the rest — starting with a family style salad bowl over-flowing with seasonal ingredients, proceeding to your entree with sides, and finishing with dessert.

Our goal is to make you feel relaxed and at-home. As Steve likes to say, “Your grandma had it right: With little fuss and no menu, she created the most memorable meals of our childhoods!” We hope you’ll join us soon to enjoy Sunday Supper at Crop.

Cool, right? They give you three courses for only $25! Yelper Pam took some great pictures, including this nice one of us (Lorelei was blurry in all of them - she doesn't stop squirming!)



It was great to bring Lorelei out, which I am always worried about, but according to the description of the dinner, things are really relaxed. Plus, other yelpers brought their kids too.

So yesterday I finally bit the bullet and joined Weight Watchers again. I'm actually really excited. Because I've had success on the program in the past, and because I really don't have a ton of weight to lose, I am hoping that I can just nip this "spare tire syndrome" in the bud and feel happy in my clothes again. I do NOT want to go buy a bunch of new clothes! (Well, maybe an outfit or two when I lose the weight as a present to myself... ;)

I was thinking that Tuesdays were going to be my weigh-in/meeting day. But last week was hectic, and I didn't get there. And yesterday, Lei had a doctor's appointment which went over, so, no meeting (plus it's sort of hard to coordinate with Derek - he said he could watch her during my meeting, but I'd have to pump or feed her right before..) So I was looking online for other meeting options and there are actually two meetings on Saturday mornings, which would be so much better because then I can just get up, feed Lei, and then leave her with Derek instead of having to drop her off at his office. So, yay! I can't wait for my first meeting on Saturday.

Because I'm nursing, I actually get a bunch more points. There's also a new system (Points Plus), which incorporates more than just calories, fat, and fiber to determine values...so it'll be a bit of an adjustment. Actually, though, most of what I normally eat on WW (i.e., not a ton of processed food) have equal values to the old points. Plus, fruit is now free! HOLLA! And you get more points daily and for your weekly extra points too. So we'll see how this pans out. Yesterday I ate mostly normally, except I made an effort to do the following things:

• choose a salad for lunch instead of a burger
• have only one serving of my meal at dinner instead of going back for seconds
• choose EITHER dessert OR wine (Um, I chose wine!)

Other than that, I ate normally. I think this will be good, as long as I plan a bit, and make sure to stock the fridge/pantry with TONS of fruit and other healthy snacks. Of course, going to the supermarket is impossible today, because we have another lovely snowstorm on our hands..but I'll go tomorrow. 

Not sure exactly what my "starting weight" is...it fluctuates a ton depending on the time of day I weigh myself and what I've eaten that day. But I'll use the weight I got yesterday on my scale and then possibly update if it is very different at my first meeting.

Current Weight: 168.5

Goal Weight: 150

Mini-goal: 5% (8 lbs) = 160.5

So...here we go!

High Five

This has been a great weekend so far, and it's not even halfway over!


Yesterday, I was a huge nerd.  After picking up my car from the mechanic, I went over to the Old Angle Tavern to...wait for it...meet a bunch of people I didn't know.  That's right, there was a Yelp Cleveland meet-up last night.  For those of you who don't know about Yelp, it's a website where people review local businesses and share information.  There's also a discussion forum where people write about funny topics. Anyway, I joined in September to give me something else to do (other than blogging of course) while job-searching...and the people are really nice.  One of the girls sent out a message this week suggesting we all get together for a drink on Friday night - and we did!

It kinda felt like a group blind date at first, especially when I was the first one there and didn't really know which group, if any, was the one I should be looking for.  Turns out that I was sitting one seat away from another yelper at the bar (she didn't have a picture up on the site, so I didn't recognize her) and only realized it when A., another yelper, came in!

It was really fun, and, for the first time, I felt like I was taking some sort of initiative with my social life.  Being married is so great, but it's difficult to meet new people without going a bit out of your way.  I have met a couple of cool new people at work since I started 2 weeks ago, but this was another way to feel like I was making new friends.

I got home at about 8:30, and my two sisters-in-law, Becca and Alida, arrived shortly thereafter to spend a weekend with us in ol' Cleve-o!  We had fun last night walking around the Tremont Art Walk, popped into Loop, the new coffee shop/record store on our corner, and got some pizza from Edison's.  The girls seemed to really like the neighborhood.

Watched some late-night entertainment shows like The Soup and Chelsea Lately - hilarious!  and then went to bed.

This morning I went out for a great 5-mile run.  The weather was unseasonably warm - and I guess I was a little overdressed in pants and a long-sleeve shirt - but it still felt great.  The sun felt so nice on my face and, additionally, it just felt great to be out there.  My goal was to do either 5 miles or an hour-long run, whichever came first.  Turns out I did 5 in about 57 minutes, but then jogged as a cooldown until my watch said 1 hour, then did the routine stretching and whatnot.  The foot felt pretty good, and at one point I didn't feel any pain at all.  I was a bit tired during this run, but was still really glad to do it and felt great afterward.

While Becca was at her physical therapy conference at the Cleveland Clinic, Derek and I took Alida to the West Side Market - she was so impressed!  We got a bunch of stuff for sandwiches and are currently just having a lazy afternoon at home.

More tomorrow!