Five Things: Did you miss me?

Long time no write. Babies keep you busy. Let’s see if I can do a summary.

My son, Erik Alexander Stroud, was born at 10am on November 19, 2013 via C-section. He weighed in at 8lbs 14oz and we are over the moon. I was on maternity leave for 3 months and have just started back to work. While on maternity leave my day consisted of feed the baby, change the baby, cuddle the baby with a small sprinkling of do the dishes/laundry and a bit of making wheat bread and homemade pizzas. I would like to state, for the record, that I would make a GREAT stay-at-home mom. Unfortunately I’m the bread-winner so that’s not an option.

1. Work/Programming
This last Monday (2/24) was my first day back at work. This week has just been a blur as I spin-up on a bunch of new projects. At the moment I have only one project that would include programming.. and even then we’re checking around to see if it’s still necessary to develop/maintain the tool (I think it is). All my other projects are evaluation/testing projects. Ones where I get to figure it out technically.. but really end up doing nearly none of the work. It’s an interesting place to be.

Co-workers missed me and in fact one told me I’m never allowed to leave again. 🙂 It’s good to be back but I miss being at home. In fact I feel kind of bad basically dumping the baby on Fearghus. I went from being home 24/7 to being in the SF office at work 4 days this week. Luckily I’ve worked it out with my boss and (at least for the next two months) I’ll be working at home 3 days a week.

2. Home
Before the baby everyone told me that a clean house was something of the past. While at home I was supposed to be so frantic in watching the baby that meals, cleaning and dishes would totally fall by the wayside and we’d be up to our neck in filth.

Yeah.. people were wrong. Granted the first week or so took some adjusting.. but towards the end of the maternity leave I felt that we had eased into a nice schedule.

3. Health
I started to write about my weight and then realized it would be easier with a graph. When I finally generated the graph I was suprised to see that some of the things I remembered about my weight were a bit off.

Specifically. I have viewed 288 as pretty much my “normal” weight pre-miscarriage and pre-pregnancy (ie, pre 11/2012). Looking over the graph it appears that my memory is flawed. Even before the miscarriage my weight trended up in early 2012 putting my “normal” weight closer to 295. I totally blame that on the stress of dealing with selling the house (and then moving twice).

My highest weight EVER is 345. That happened both in August, just before my wedding at 6 months pregnant (and just before the doctor assigned eating plan), and again a few days before the baby’s birth.
The morning before the birth I weighted 341.7.
Right after the birth (11/23) I weighed 332.0. The baby weighed 8 lbs 14 oz.
Over the last three months I’ve lost a total of 33 lbs.
Today my weight is at 299.6 and has been hovering +/- 2 lbs of that over the last three weeks.

This puts me right now pretty much back to where I started before the stress with the house. Now I just need to keep it up.

Current plan is to continue with the doctor recommended eating plan and hopefully to add in some walking time on the treadmill.

4. SCA/Projects
Kicking my own ass into gear. I haven’t stalled completely with having new baby.. but my quantity is definitely down. That said I did make a bit of progress on a some projects. Before the end of my pregnancy I did (finally) finish Miach’s Rus pants and got those to him before they needed them. I changed both my black kirtle and my blue kirtle so they open down the front and have eyelets for a lace. It turns out that front-laced kirtles do make perfect breastfeeding garb.

Project list:
1. Bob’s Waffenrock. I’ve done the patterning of him I just need to generate a mockup and then tweak the fit. This is the top project and is designated to be done on Tuesdays and Fridays.
2. Finish adding eyelets to the front of my brown wool kirtle. I’m about 1/2 way done. I just need to finish it. This will be my hand-sewing project for my commute.
3. Gold Anglo-Saxon hand-sewn tunic. This stalled during the late part of the pregnancy. I made the mistake of trying this on during the pregnancy and found out it didn’t fit.. add to that, I wasn’t sure that it would fit even after the pregnancy so I stopped spending time on it. Luckily I tried it on again and found that the tunic will fit. So now I just need to spend time finishing it.
4. Pennsic is coming. I already have a full todo list for garb for pennsic. As soon as I finish the 3 projects above Pennsic garb will jump to the top of the list. Currently planning to make Fearghus 2 tunics, make me 3 kirtles and make all kind of garb for Erik.

5.
Pizza dough (makes 4 pizzas)
3 3/4 cup unbleached AP flour
2 1/4 tsp kosher salt
1 Tbsp sugar
3 tsp yeast
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 cup lukewarm water

In a largish container mix ingredients together with a wooden spoon. Stir until all dry ingredients are incorporated. Let rise for 2 hrs. Dough can be used right away or can be refrigerated for up to 2 weeks.

To make the pizza:

Preheat your oven to the highest setting, which will be 500 to 550°F, with a pizza stone in the bottom 1/3 of the oven. Depending on the thickness of your stone this can take between 20 and 40 minutes.

Pull out an 8-ounce piece of dough from your bucket and quickly form it into a ball, no more than 30 seconds of work. Let it sit on the counter while you gather your toppings.

Roll the ball out into a 1/8-inch-thick round. Transfer this to a pizza peel sprinkled with flour or corn meal. Top with sauce (I like minced garlic and olive oil) and toppings. Bake for about 8 minutes.

Future:
March 15: a friend’s wedding
March 22: March Crown (still up-in-the-air whether we’ll attend)
April 19: West Kingdom Town Market
May 3: Beltane
May 22: Cynaguan Coronet
June 14: Duchess War
June 21: June Crown
July 1-6: West/An Tir War
July 25-Aug. 10: Pennsic!!