March for Babies...

Every day, thousands of babies are born too soon, too small and often very sick. I'm walking in March for Babies because I want to do something about this. And I need your help.

Please support my walk. Making a secure donation is easy: just click the 'donate now' button on this page. Thank you for helping me give all babies a healthy start!

The mission of March of Dimes is to improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth, and infant mortality.

Your gift will support March of Dimes research and programs that help moms have full-term pregnancies and babies begin healthy lives. And it will be used to bring comfort and information to families with a baby in newborn intensive care.

Click on my link and donate today!

Spring is in the air and my photoshoot is tonight...

Today was pretty darn gorgeous out in the City of Brotherly Love.  It was sunny and you could definitely feel that spring is in the air!

Tonight is the night I am doing my first fitness photo shoot after a very long hiatus from doing things like this due to being pregnant and then birthing Jonathan throughout all of 2010. This is not the annual photo shoot that I am desperate to look great for... that has been put on the back burner until further notice. For photo shoots like that I usually am showing my physique to display the strength in my arms or legs. and right now neither my arms or legs  look all that strong. Anyway, tonight I will be taking a few photos of me doing a workout of my Springboard Pilates equipment for The Well Loft website. I must admit I am excited to be getting the photos done as my husband (who is a photographer) does excellent photo shop editing. Lol! He can make someone average look like Halle Berry. So my wardrobe of choice tonight is a pair of fitted black yoga pants and a bright blue tank. I will have to suck and hold in the little bit of gut that I have left as well as tilt my head down so it doesn't appear that I have somewhat of a double chin. Trust me I know all the right angles to hit to make me look great! I must admit though...I am a bit down on myself because I would have thought by the time Jonathan was 4 months old (which he will be, this coming Sunday) I would have lost all of the baby weight. I still have a good 15 pounds to lose! The thing that is keeping the weight on and by no means does this imply any sort of an excuse is the lack of time to work out and my diet! Those monthly chick-fil-a visits aren't helping me at all either. However, it's more about the workouts than anything else. I am lucky if I get to workout three times a week now. It's that bad. Between work, home, the baby and running two businesses while voluntering on and for community projects I need like 10 more hours in a day! Whew...I gotta work this time thing out because Lord knows it's working me out!

Pictures will be posted later....smooches to anyone out there that is reading.


From the photo shoot 3/11/2011...still working on my body!

A Mom's Playgroup with...shoes, wine, books and oh yeah babies.

I'm looking for a mom's playgroup that Jonathan and I can join. Inititally, I thought I would create the perfect group on my own and I actually began to. I called it The Real SAHM's (Stay at Home Moms) of Philadelphia. I thought it would be cute as it would be a spin off kind of playgroup based on my favorite reality show The Real Housewives of (you fill in the city)...well that lasted all of 2 days! I put an end to that whole idea when I started getting bombarded with requests to join the group that I had created on the ning network. I felt overwhelmed as I struggled to answer each individual email I received. Then it was the emails about when our first meeting would be and where and what we would do. Needless to say I put an end to that quickly and deleted the group. I am a business owner and entreprenuer at heart so to start my own playgroup made sense to me but seriously... am I crazy? Like I need one more thing on my plate to have to do. Plus, there are so many mom's groups out there I am bound to find one that I like where I don't have to do much more but show up and eat! Now the thing is with other groups is I am pretty particular in joining a bunch of ladies that I do not know. Afterall,  this is very much a social setting for myself not only for Jonathan. Jonathan is a mild baby who will get along with any baby so it's more about me finding the right fit for ME! For instance. I don't want a group of Mom's that are traditional in that they do all the typical mommy stuff that I don't like doing like cooking and cleaning and clipping coupons. Just ask Ish and he'll tell you I am not a Betty Crocker type of Mom whatsoever. Sometimes I don't even know how my kids and Ish eat! Luckily, for me he's Puerto Rican and in the PR culture a lot of the men cook. So he makes arroz y grandules y pollo (rice and beans and chicken) a few times a week. Not good for my waistline but I'd rather have him cook than for then me to make things like waffles for dinner. Cleaning is a whole other ball game. He's lucky if I do the dishes after he cooks (it's the least I can do I guess). Cleaning is not my forte' ...my house isn't dirty but it could use some tidying up. Hey.. I have a baby though and who has time? Anyway, back on topic...as I am looking for a play group to join I will be looking for Moms that like the things I like. Some of which are shopping for shoes (although I am financially challenged right now), reading books, drinking wine, wearing cute clothes and of course exercising. So in short I am looking for a Mom's Playgroup with...shoes, wine, books and oh yeah babies. To make my search easy I am researching groups online like Meetup.org and of course using the bing search engine. I'll report what I find later. Until then here are some pictures of  a few Mom's I would want to hang out with...




Ellen Pompeo going to Yoga with Baby Stella




Halle and daughter Nahla shopping



Kourt and Kim and baby Mason looking cute!

The Workout Report: Cardio Hoop

First Lady Michelle hooping it up!

I am whittling my middle with cardio hooping. Cardio hooping is a lot like the hula hooping kids do (or use to do) but the hoop is much larger and a bit heavier. I tried this one-on-one last Friday with an amazing instructor and I have decided that cardio hooping is now my new thing! What it does is it enforces good posture and stability of the core muscles. Often enough people think that core muscles are just the abdominals when they are actually the low back muscles (spinal erectors), the hips and the pelvis. When these muscles are strong you stand up taller and you look leaner and thinner. Now, doing a hula hoop at my age is not easy. In fact the first few times I had a lot of trouble keeping the hoop up and then keeping it going. Now since I have a fair share of hips I thought I would be able to keep that hoop going like no body's business, but it's truly not about the hips... it's about the waist and it's hard to do. You really have to suck in your stomach and push from your abdominal muscles and your butt while doing sort of like a modified lunge. It feels really weird and it looks strange if you don't know what you are doing (which I totally didn't) but I liked it and I want to get it! The instructor Jennifer Alvarez who was leading me during this private class was a freaking bombshell at it. She demonstrated some of the harder movements that involve more rhythmic dancing. That's the stuff I want to do! As she was moving the hoop about her body it was truly mesmerizing how she would take it from her hips up to her waist then her chest than she would take one leg out from the center and walk with one leg through and one leg out. It was wild and I want to do that! Jennifer also performs hoop dance at lots of places throughout the Delaware valley as she has been doing this a long time. She was also real encouraging. So now that's its 5 days later and I am still thinking about hooping I began to research more about it online. See when I discover a new fitness thing I want to know all about it. So, I do a search for cardio hooping on google. Lo and behold I find an article that says that First Lady Michelle Obama and Beyonce does hooping! Okay. I am sold. If Michelle Obama does hooping and she is the First lady than I know I can hoop!   When I read Beyonce hoops too I was doubly (doubly is that a misspelled word?) sold. Anyone who knows me know that both of these ladies are the divas I am training to be! They are both outstanding business women who know how to empower a woman to take charge of her career, life, and total wellness while maintaining their respect, class and status. I actually posed as both Michelle Obama and Beyonce on a photo shoot that paid homage to black women icons throughout the ages (those pictures are a whole other blog post). Anyway, as I digress into lesser important things the article included a study on hooping....I'll be darn that someone had that much time on their hands to create a study about this....but then again I have enough time to read it, so I guess we're even in that regard. The study took 16 women from the ages of 16 to 59 and asked them to perform 2-30 minute segments of hooping.  Following the testing, the researchers determined that hooping burns an average of seven calories per minute for a total of about 210 calories during a 30-minute hooping workout. As for heart-rate data, the average HR was 151 bpm (beats per minute), which works out to approximately 84 percent of the age-predicted HRmax for the average subject (Figures 1 and 2). Finally, the RPE (rate of perceived excertion) average for the workout was rated by participants as “somewhat hard” on the Borg Scale. In addition to the hard data the researchers uncovered, they suggests that given the variety of movements in hooping it should be considered a total-body workout that has the potential to improve your flexibility and balance while strengthening and toning the muscles of the back, abdomen, arms and legs. The rhythmic nature of hooping may also be relaxing and almost meditative for some.

So this proves that hooping is not only good enough for a Mom and diva in training like myself, but it does the heart and the mind and the body some good too!

Check out this video of my girl Jennifer Alvarez in action

 

Reference
(http://www.acefitness.org/certifiednewsarticle/1094/ace-sponsored-research-hooping-effective-workout)

Until they grow up I will be loosing my mind!

Time is going to fast, Jonathan is sick, Elias is 9 years old today, my teenager has a HS interview on Saturday and I am loosing my mind! There is too much going on. Number 1 I hate when my kids are sick. It really makes me feel helpless that I can not make them well with a snap of my fingers. Also, to have my baby sick????  That really hits a mother hard. Mostly because babies can not do to much to help themselves feel better. They can not wipe their own noses, or relax themselves to sleep, so it's really difficult. Jonathan got sick from last week when we had those two days of good weather. During that time bacteria must have gotten into his airway and created his sore throat and runny nose to make this cold he now has. For him to be sick at only three months really bothers me. Ish and I bought him a vaporizer to try and clear his congestion up. This makes me want him to get older fast so he can be able to help himself get better quicker. When Jonathan grows up I just want him to be well and for him to be a good person.

Elias is turning 9 years old and we're having a birthday party for him this weekend. I am looking forward to the party however, he is getting older and the problem is... he is getting older and I want to slow down time. Although I encourage my children to be independent he is growing too fast and I am missing some of his dependency on me and some of  his childhood activities like him playing with toys and watching cartoons. All he wants to do now is play video games and watch the older kid TV shows like Suite Life on Deck and all of those other shows with the "cool high school kids" that never seem to have parents. It seems like every one of those shows are the same with different kids but the same content. Today is Elias's actual birthday and Ish is going to his class to bring him doughnuts. He didn't want cupcakes. He said cupcakes aren't cool and the cool thing now is a variety box of doughnuts. This is so that everyone in his class can have the doughnut that they want. I thought to myself okay sir... uh... do you want coffee for your class too, or let me guess lattes? Anyway, that's my little pumpkin and he can have whatever he wants. Elias tells me when he grows up he wants to be a football player.

My nameless older child has a high school interview this Saturday. His dad will be taking him. When he told me about it and how much he wanted to "get in" to this particular school, I suggested that he wear a tie with dress pants to look presentable. So, he says to me "Mom no one dresses like that because it's lame, and I have to wear a tie to school everyday so on the weekends I want to chill."  Quick side bar....everything is about chilling with this kid!  Okay, so as not to appear totally uncool I say to him, "Yeah you might want to look just like everyone else that shows up for the interview so you have a good chance at getting into the school." To which he says, "Maybe I will dress up so I can look different." I thought to myself  hey that reverse psychology stuff really does work. I may try that again on him in the future when it's time to do chores like cleaning his room. We were on the phone having this conversation (my two older boys live with their dad) so I wish him luck and say goodbye. Immediately after hanging up I thought to myself, my little boy is really growing up.  A high school interview...than it'll be college, than marriage, kids and I'm a grandma with a snap of the fingers like that! A'Van wants to a be a video game designer when he grows up.