Sweet Cheeks

I hope everyone is doing well!

I thought I'd update you on George, jogging, etc. Saturday will mark three weeks since I have gone dairy-free. I kind of told you about the major setback we had last week when we accidentally gave George a milk-based formula for a feeding on Wednesday (he gets very occasional formula feedings on days when I work), and boy oh boy, did he break out big-time the next day. It was really sad, and it was frustrating for me to have gotten us both free of milk in our systems and seeing positive results only to be moved back to scratch. Lots of dedication in this past week though has resulted in excellent smooth, delicious cheeks. Just have a look yourself!

Such satisfaction! And I worked extra hard to have a plentiful milk supply for George on the two days I worked this week, so we didn't even have to chance our new "alimentum" formula. Hopefully we won't have to. This diet, which seemed so cumbersome and restricting at first, is something I have quite gotten used to and am not really saddened by anymore. The only exception is when I think of pizza. But really, we have made a couple of trips to health food stores and have found some good replacements like almondmilk yogurt, chocolate-covered ice cream bites made from rice milk, and a few other things. BJ keeps trying to get me to try the fake cheese (he excitedly argues that it even melts all stringy-like), but I just can't make myself do that yet. As my mother-in-law pointed out, even non-fat cheese is pretty nasty. So when I ask BJ about what this "cheese" consists of ingredient-wise, his response of "A bunch of crazy stuff" really made my decision for me. Dinners for us this week have been good though; some Mexican mash-ups consisting of black beans, rice, avocados, and salsa, as well as a chicken sloppy joe covered in fritos. The nice thing is I can enjoy the fritos guilt-free since I'm still eating way less calories than I used to; I'm now down below my pre-pregnancy weight.

In other news, Sunday marks our second annual Oklahoma Memorial Marathon relay. Apart from BJ and me, this year our team is all-new, as in they weren't our team members last year. However, one of them (Chanda) has run a half-marathon in the past, and the other two (Jordan and Greg) both ran marathons in Chicago last fall. Uh, yeah, you think I might be holding our team back a little? It will no doubt take me longer to run my 5K than it will take BJ and Greg to run their 10K's. Ah well. My training was interrupted about six weeks ago when I had a sciatic flare-up and couldn't run for three weeks, not that that is any excuse. Without that hiccup I probably would have been able to run the whole thing, but as it stands now I am merely going to have fun and try not to take 45 minutes to finish. BJ, Chanda, and I are excited (I'm sure Greg and Jordan are too but we haven't talked with them since they arrived in from Chicago). Chanda's husband Landon is going to be our cheering squad and we'll all be busy going back and forth on the shuttle to see each other start and finish our respective legs. I will certainly post pictures!

Happy weekend everyone!