The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

The Good:

*In the process of taking down the Christmas decorations I finally hung bells on the doors we want Izzy to use. AND she now rings the bell when she wants to go out. It's so adorable I can hardly stand it. I want you all to come over just so she can ask to go out and I can stand there beaming with pride.

*Sunday night I decided it was time to stop waiting for the baby weight to fall off on it's own and actually start exercising.It's almost been three months, after all, and horseback riding a few hours a week certainly won't do the trick. SO, I braved the scale a set a goal to be down five pounds in two weeks.


The Bad:

*Izzy is abusing her new-found power and asks to go out CONSTANTLY. Half the time she's like a cat and goes part-way out and stands in the doorway trying to decide if the wind chill is to her liking.

*We're having a bit of a melt-down (literally) in the pastures. I know it will freeze again before the real Spring thaw, but WHEW, is it ever stinky out there! I don't even want to wear my new insulated muck boots (can you say 'heaven', btw. Never ever thought I would be so excited about such a thing, but it happens more and more often lately.) in it because I don't want them to smell. If only I could float over the top, that would be perfect.

The Ugly:

*Usually Izzy sticks around the yard when she goes out unless she is following me to feed the horses. Yesterday she went out to 'play' in the muck three times. . . which means I bathed her three times. I didn't even bring her with me for the night feeding, the boys let her out when she rang the bell and she raced out to me before they could stop her. That's going to get old really fast.

*Apparently I was more determined to lose that baby weight than I realized. I was down six pounds by the same time Monday. Pretty amazing, I must say. (Toot-toot) I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that I ended up hugging the porcelain most of Sunday night and the next morning. It's been a long time since I've been hit that hard with the flu. I could hardly walk because my whole body ached so bad all day Monday, not that it felt much better to sit or lay, or just exist. Luckily it was a twenty-four hour bug so today I'm weak, but functioning. . .slowly. Nick was the first one to get it and I'm hoping the rest of the family - especially the baby - can avoid it.