One Month Pic Update

 One month since the last pics, 3 weeks post-surgery.  I'm mostly posting these so I can see the transformation.

A Week Into It

Well, I'm a week into this stage of the journey.  I wouldn't say it's been hard or something to overcome, it's just different with some inconveniences.  Pain.  Yes, there's been pain.  Of course.  I had major anatomy-changing surgery.  It wasn't magic.  There were machines and scalpels and stitches involved.  I had to figure out how to sit and stand based on the pain radiating from my right side when I moved certain ways.  I almost resorted to calling the doctor, because, why is there pain there?!  Well, i revisited the video of the surgery, and the pain I was experiencing was from my irritated stomach and irritated intestines and where they were forced to become new friends.  Duh.  That has since dissipated (a little over a week) and now I'm on to the best part.......itching.  Dear lord.  The itching.  Thankfully, it's not hitting me constantly, just in waves.  And my incision sites are a little irritated.  We (me, my expert friends, and the surgeon's nurse) figure it's from the glue that is still present.  At CVS, i found a hydrocortisone roller, so that is now my new best friend and in just 24 hours the glue has started to peel and flake off with a purpose.  None of this lazy, take our time, crap.  LOL.  

As for eating; I'm doing ok.  the first 2 weeks are liquid only.  So, watered-down protein shakes, broth with unflavored protein powder, Gatorade, ice pops, and a i get my one Jell-O cup a day.  My one fear of all of this was that I would be the one person in the world for whom this didn't work and I will have majorly impacted my existence for no reason.  Well, apparently, i was wrong.  I have been losing 1-2 lbs. a day.  Yay me!  I know this will slow down as I become able to consume some solids again, but I'm optimistic in my continued progress.  Now, don't get me wrong, the eating part is FREAKING HARD.  My hubby is an amazing cook and what i smell and see the kids eating everyday makes my mouth water.  Also, just walking through CVS yesterday, i saw all the things I COULD buy.  Stuff I probably would have bought myself before.  I mean, i was stopping in to get anti-itchy stuff and a Gatorade, but then heading to the softball field for the girl's practice.  Perfect opportunity for a snack, right?  Anytime, you're going to just be sitting and watching is snack time, right?  There in lies the problems for so many people.  I was not a binger.  I was not someone who only consumed junk.  We don't eat out on a regular basis.  I don't even really buy prepared food.  My weekly trip consists of 80% from the perimeter of the store with a few things from the center.  However, snacks.  Especially, when you're on the go a lot and the kids "need" a boost.  It's so easy to stop and grab stuff.  And, OH, the choices we have!!  I tell you what, I honed in on a bag of ranch Doritos yesterday and was like, wow, that would be great.  I could almost imagine the taste and texture.  But this is a whole new way of looking at food and at my habits.  I don't expect I will ever entirely overcome my desire for tasty things, but I know now that my body is not going to handle it well.  I know some day I will get to eat again, just in a much more conscientious and deliberate way.  Hubby and I have been plotting my next couple of months.  Tuna, salmon, crab, discovering sugar free sauces, cheeses, etc.  I've never been so excited at the thought of a couple mouthfuls of tuna salad. LOL.  

I don't have a picture for you today.  Meant to, since we had a scout thing on Tuesday and my shirt was a lot looser and i tucked it in, but alas, it didn't happen.  So, for my "visual" progress note, I will state that since I started the full journey in October, I've lost 52lbs as of this morning.  A long way to go, but that's not a bad start at all!

A New Leg of the Journey

I haven't used this blog for nearly 5 years now.  I used to be all over it just putting, mostly random, thoughts on the 'paper' especially when I participated in the A-Z challenge and also documenting all of my kid's birthdays.  I still encourage you to look if you need an idea!  However, life evolves.  My kids are no longer interested in the over-the-top parties, and I lost interest in the A-Z challenge.  So, here we are, 5 years later.  Why?  Because I have taken a huge step in my journey.  Thanks to support from family and friends and new insurance that actually covers the procedure, I embarked on my path to better physical health with a new tool.  The Single Anastomosis Duodeno-ileal Bypass or SADI-S.  This is a nifty, fairly new procedure that was first brought to medical world in 2007.  You've probably heard of the gastric bypass (started in 1966) or the gastric sleeve (1980), but not the SADI-S.  It's a combination of the two.  Care to see more?  https://youtu.be/JpjFoVoOVZg 

Anyhow, I've been working on just getting approval since October.  Insurance may cover, but they still make you work for it!  I had to get cardiac clearance, psychological clearance, and then attend separate appointments with either the nurse or the dietician.  Y'all know how patient I am, right?  lol.  every time an appointment got moved or they couldn't get me in for the next one for 2-3 weeks drove me batty!!  I mean, come on people, let's do this!  Anyway, as I've been told multiple times and, while I still don't like it, time passes quickly and we finally completed the package of requirements and insurance approved it and then....well, it took 2 months to get scheduled (aacckkk!!!).  But April 21 came, surgery happened, and now I'm in the recovery phase of this adventure.  Some interesting take-aways this week....

- I only remember being in pre-op and then I was scooting over to the operating table.  I do not recall leaving pre-op at all and I have no memories after the scoot.  Just waking up.  It’s really weird.  I'm sure they talked to me, right?  Told me to scoot up or down on the table, lay on my back, tell me when they were giving me the good meds?  but there's nothing in my memory bank.  It's strange to know I'm missing a segment.

- I can remember what I said while waking up and loopy, like asking the nurses if they liked cookies.  They thought I was just saying random things.  They were surprised when, through the efforts of 2 friends, a kid I birthed and the hubby, an entire case of GS cookies arrived the next morning for them.  

- NOTE - do NOT give the nurses the cookies BEFORE they finish your discharge paperwork.  These are words of wisdom, trust me.  Those nurses disappeared so fast with my papers just sitting there on the desk waiting to be finished.  Sigh.

- My mother is awesome!  When I finally got to my room, every nurse around already knew me quite well.  Like mother, like daughter, I guess.  Once you get us started, over-sharing is a thing.  It's what makes us so lovable!

- And lastly, and this really important in case anyone else does this.  No one verbally explained that the Tylenol should be either liquid or crushed.  It's buried in the paperwork (i found later) but for the last 2.5 days, I've been hurting.  One of my incisions apparently got more if the surgical action than the others and it is not a happy place.  no infection, just bruised and sore.  I've been holding my stomach when doing any kind of movement.  Today, i called to ask if this was a sign of something bad.  The surgeon's nurse asked if I was keeping up with my meds and if i was crushing everything into water.  Umm....no.  the hospital even gave me pills to swallow.  She pointed out that the pills at the hospital were in the gel tabs.  I have regular old Walmart brand white pills here.  Guess what, (dummy here), my stomach can no longer dissolve the cheapo pills in time to make a difference.  Hubby has since retrieved both liquid and powdered Tylenol and my outlook had really improved!  the more you know!

So, this has gone on longer than intended and I haven't even posted my goals or my before pic.  Geez, Jenna, get with it! 

My goals:

1. More time with my kids

2. Hiking with my scouts

3. normal chairs

4. Not paying extra for the larger sizes

5. rides that I don’t have to squeeze into

6. My uniforms fitting

7. getting off the medications (I'm diabetic)

And, alas, the before pics. These were taken about a week ago. I did lose 40lbs prior to this picture throughout the prep process.

DEMIGOD Party - A Socially-distanced 10th Birthday

 Another birthday in the books!  J really loves the Percy Jackson books and we've read the second series too with the Roman demigods.  The invites were based off of ones i saw online.  (Once again, we had to keep it small.  I can't wait to have full blow out parties again!)  Simple printout and glue to short pieces of dowel rod.  They were a little tricky to get in the envelopes, but we managed.

For decorations, we went simple, with white and I ordered some cardboard Roman Columns that we attached to the front of an easy up tent.

Activities included..

Getting claimed by your Godly parent.  We made necklaces with the symbol of a Greek or Roman God or Goddess and put them in seal envelopes.  Then the kids were asked to take the envelope that was calling to them.  The necklaces were also used to collect beads for each training exercise they completed.

Zeus' training - air - paper airplane designing and throwing contest.

    

Area/Mars Training - War - we designed shields.  The shields were pizza pans with metal slap bracelets riveted to them.  Then they could use markers and stick-on gems to decorate them.

Hercules Training - Strength Challenges.  Sit-ups, push-up, one-foot balancing, and then endurance balancing rocks on their outstretched arms.

For the contests, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place won pieces of armor (slap bracelets).

The food was pre-bagged chips, fruit snacks, and apple slices.

J doesn't like cake, so we had pudding cups.  

All in all, a decent time.  1.5 hours, done!

ART PARTY! - A Socially-Distanced 7th Birthday

This year is definitely different!  To begin with, we usually invite the entire class and entire scout groups....however, in light of being spaced out and more cautious, we had to tone it down this year....well, as much as this pinterest-mommy's heart could stand!  My daughter reached level 7!!  She chose an art party for this year.  Here below is what we did....

The invites.....i only let her invite a small handful of people.  Mostly, family and neighbors.

The set-up...we setup easy-up tents in the driveway with tables.  No one had to walk into the house at all!  And I used some plastic tablecloths to create walls and add color instead of messing with streamers.

  

For activities, we planned for tie-dye, rock painting, and decorating small wooden treasure boxes.  To prep for the party and minimize a lot of touching, i pre-packaged all the supplies each kid would need.  I got each kid an apron (set of 24 from amazon), a shirt, a little box, a paint brush, a bag with gloves and rubber bands, a bag with stick-on jewels, and (because i was at Walmart and they were calling to me) an individual pack of hand wipes.

 

As each kid arrived, they got to pick a supply kit and a gift bag.  The gift bag was to put their crafts in when they were done.  the pic above also shows the fast food boats (we used to have a food truck, so we have a lot of these leftover!) and the pre-painted rocks we prepared.  

Here is the my daughter working on her tie dye and her rocks.  For the tie dye, i limited the possible designs to just a fan fold or bullseye and we used squirt bottles, 1 at a time, to apply color.  For the rocks, i have little paint palettes and each kid got to pick 3 colors.  For some reason, I did not get a picture of her decorating her treasure box, but if they wanted to paint them, they used the same 3 colors they already had and then they had the adhesive jewels.

Once the 3 craft were done, we handed out snacks.  I let E choose crackers, gummy snacks, and a healthy thing (she went with apples).  Then we had hugs and water.  We prepacked snack bags and handed them out while E opened her gifts.

  

And finally, cake and ice-cream.  I let E choose a snack cake and the individual ice cream cups.  

So, there you have it.  A socially distanced (mostly), masked, clean-ish 7th birthday!

Kid's Cheese Party - Happy Birthday, J!

My middle son take pride in being able to pick the most obscure birthday party themes that force me to actually dig in my creative brain box verses pinte

rest to design and execute.  Last year, he wanted Cheese.  Yes, a Cheese Party.  Do you know, there are not any Pinterest posts on Kid's cheese parties?  (until now, anyway!)  The only Cheese party you are going to find are those involving wine, grapes, and cute little knives.  So, into the brain-vault we go....Turned out pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

Invite: Simple printed card that I created.

Decorations:  Everything in Yellow and White

Food:  Grilled Cheese, Cheese Sticks, Cheese Platter, Mac&Cheese, Baked Brie, Mozzarella Sticks  (veggies and fruit so we didn't get too blocked up!) and a cheesecake for the cake.

Games/Activities: 
1) Cheese Tasting.  I bought and cut up 10 different cheeses and created a judging sheet where they had to rank the smell and taste.

2) Cheese making.  This didn't do very well, since i only half listened/watched the you tube video on how to do it.  I didn't use enough milk and well....i tried.

3) Cheese ball Toss.  Each kid got a shower cap, we put a pile of shaving cream on top and then partnered them up.  They had to see how many cheese balls they could get to stick to both their caps as a team.  The winners got bags of candy to share. 

The favors were cheese sticks and baby-bells.

Cardboard Dome, aka Moon Base

As the quarantine order continues, we are finding more and more of those little projects that you pin on Pinterest but never actually intend to do!  The Cardboard Dome or "Moon base" was on ours and since I have an abundance of cardboard (due to my persistent desire to create a little oasis on my back porch), we decided, 'heck, why not'.  Couldn't take more than a few hours, right?  HA HA HA!!!  First, I found the post on Facebook where some family put one together.  They wrote all about some 'instructables' thing that they found to be wrong, so we thought we'd try theirs.  However, they didn't actually write anything USEFUL other than that the instructables instructions we wrong.  Yay.  So, J and I sat down with my trusty friend, Excel, to create our own design.  Guess what?  I'm good at geometry when it comes to sewing, not so much in the 3D world.  Go figure.  Then, my brilliant son says "why don't we just model it off of the jungle gym in the backyard...........yes........mom win.......I’ve taught a child how to think and not what to think and he figured out a solution without re-inventing the wheel.  Now, let me warn you, he still had his mother involved........who isn't very good at following instructions........I eyeballed the dimensions of the jungle gym.......yes, that's right.  Head-slap.  I assumed they were 2ft equilateral triangles.  Guess what they're not?  Yep.  However, we went forth with the plan to make 1ft equilateral triangles.  Armed with our abundance of cardboard and box-cutters (thank you, honey) we went forth and began cutting....

Here is our model:

We cute 40 1ft equilateral triangles.......

We put together 6 pentagons (the 10 extra triangles were for the connector pieces)...

And then began the really fun part.  Putting the pieces together.  Any idea how heavy cardboard can get?  it was falling apart all over the place.  We ran out of duct tape and resorted to painters tape.  Disaster.  

My genius hubby suggested we take a break and order some duct tape for pickup at home depot the next day.  Where does he get these ideas, huh?  so, i ordered the tape.......went and got it this morning and we managed to get it together.  duct tape really is a miracle.  

And, in true Jenna-fashion.....we taped the hell out of it.  Added some extra panels on the bottom to raise it up and ta-da!  

Now, they are fighting over who can fit in it, how high the volume on each of their devices should be, who's foot is in who's face........ahh....harmonious-ness.  i'm done.  Moon base, check.  time for a wine cooler and some gardening!

(bonus picture of what it looks like on the inside)