Changes in my Life

It's hardly a secret among people I know personally, but I've fallen out of the habit of blogging, so I haven't posted it here. After being married for nearly eleven years, my wife Tammy is finally pregnant! We've been terribly happy for months now as the news has sunk in - first keeping it to ourselves through the first trimester (which we were told was the most iffy part of the pregnancy), and then slowly starting to tell others - first our parents on Christmas, then friends, and now Tammy's been posting to facebook with updates.

To answer the question that usually comes up at this point - yes, we do know, and it's a Girl.

This is probably one of the biggest changes in my life. Getting married wasn't this much of a change - at the time we were living together anyway, and were pretty effectively married in thought even if we hadn't gone through the ceremony yet. But this... this is going to change everything.

We're starting to clean out the second bedroom to make it into a child's room - first moving the bed out of there, then cleaning it out so we can re-paint it a softer color. Thanks to my mom, we've got a changing table and crib already. We're starting to go shopping a little, stopping in here and there to pick up things that catch our eyes. My mom couldn't resist stopping and buying some clothes before we even knew the sex of the child. We've just become big fans of consignment shows and shops, thanks to a timely bit of advice from a co-worker: Just Between Friends had a sale in Aurora this weekend, and we loved picking up outfits for two or three bucks, and splurged on a bedding set with animals on it for $100 which included all sorts of things, including a lamp. (So, yes, if you want to match the kid's decor, use animals.)

I'm also working on my weight. I've been overweight all my life, and the biggest chance I got at reducing was back in 2003, when I got down to about 270 lbs from a starting point of 360, which is where I tend to hover. That run at losing ran aground on the economy and getting laid off - without the regular support of Weight Watchers and the exercise habit I'd been in, I slowly gained that all back. But this is it - a kid is damn important, and I want to be able to participate in her life, damnit, not just sit by and watch it. I'd already decided to lose weight (and had been working on it informally), and then came across a link mdlbear posted to his livejournal to http://www.fatsecret.com/, which is great. It gives me an easy way to track my food intake and my weight, it lets me choose from almost a dozen different popular diets (I'm just eating fewer calories), there's android and iphone apps for on the go, and it's got lots of Web 2.0 community features.

It's not perfect, mind - the site's suggestion for calories/day to lose weight is about 300 calories higher than what other sites have suggestions. And the navigation around the social area of the site is pretty weak and could use some work. But it is helping me keep track of what I eat, and it is helping me lose weight - as of my last weigh-in, I was at 330.5 pounds. My first goal is to get down to 300 pounds, which I think we can all agree is a nice round number. My second goal is to get down to 290, which is a point where my weight is considered 'acceptable' by insurance companies - at that weight, I can buy insurance for myself and my kid pretty easily. (My wife's history of diabetes gets in the way of her getting insurance, sadly, but there's a more expensive option if the insurance broker I've been talking to can't find something else.)

So, there we go. I'm gaining a daughter, and losing a lot of weight. And happier than I think I've ever been.