gastric sleeve | thechroniclesofanonbellymama

Halfway through the summer, and to say that it’s been busy is an understatement. There has been SO much going on! Between shuttling the kids around to different activities, house/apartment hunting, vacationing, boating, and SURGERY (that’s really what this post is about), we’ve barely had time to do laundry and grocery shopping! Here’s a few pics of summer so far, just to fill you in! Few bullet points while I’m at it too!

* Mariah is having the summer of her life! Vacationing with grandparents, sailing school, soccer camp, and a visit with her birth mom coming up (ugh for us, yay for her!), she’s exclaimed several times, “BEST. SUMMER. EVER!”

Hiking the Adirondaks!

Learning to sail on her own

They were next!

Tubing on the Delaware

* Noah has really had an explosion of language this summer. He can often be heard around the house saying, “Ackkk-shully, I don’t want that! And ackkk-shully, it’s my turn!” Yeah…”actually” is a real thing that my 2.5 year old says incessantly and in context. Also, “oh shit!” He says that quite a bit too. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ He has suddenly become this animal/bug lover and INSISTS on saying hello to every animal he sees on the street, even pigeons and squirrels and like, WHY?!?! He is 98% potty trained with the exception of having had a handful of poop accidents, but even then it’s mostly our fault because we know his “times” and we still haven’t gotten it down to a science. He’s working on recognizing the letters of his name, and can get through the N and the O before repeating them again for the A and H…sorta like, “my name is NOAH and my letters is N..O…N…O”.. Yeah, that’s basically his name these past few weeks. “NO, noah..no!” Still as cute as ever though!

“SHEEEESEEE MAMA!”

Potty Time!

Insisting on being a “sirena” like his sister!

My little animal lover

First time fishing (catch and release upon Noah’s insistence!)!

He loves his mama

Dapper young sir

*Levi has really been a terror these past few weeks. There have been quite a few transitions at home with vacation, packing for moving, my surgery, a new teacher in his classroom, and if there is anything we have noticed, he does not do well with change. Throw in A LOT of change, and well, he’s miserable. He is absolutely our rough and tumble kid though. There is nothing that scares this kid! Not heights, not rocks, not the dark, not the threat of a pow-pow on his tiny hiny, NOTHING! He jumps from the 3rd step, climbs the highest chair, and always has to run, “fast, fast fast, with my light shoes”! He’s 2 seconds from riding a two wheeler and can almost always be found sitting on his blue balance bike, even while he sits in the living room watching Mickey Mouse Roadster Racers (if i hear, “mamaaaa, kiki mouse roader racies is alllllll done! AGAIN!” one more time, I may lose it!) eating blueberries with no clothes on. Yes, that has happened. Several times. He’s still our super funny, super affectionate boy who has a sweet tooth for DAYS and the tiniest sweetest little voice when he respectfully asks, “mama….may i peeeeese havie my pacieeee-fiiiiiyah!?!” Also, math skills for days. Can count to the mid 20’s in two languages and sorting for him is a joke! Cool kid for sure.

Fisrt train ride was EVERYTHING!

“MAMA, I swim!”

He absolutely LOVES karate!

Bubble time

Handsome Buddy

Loving rides on Mama’s back

*Austin, well, there is so much to say about this little guy. Currently at 19 months he outweighs his brothers by close to 7lbs (who who think he was under 4lbs when he was born!?), and is still not really speaking. We got him approved for speech services and have been working with the coordinators to find him a bilingual therapist. He’s our best sleeper, eater, and traveler. Most of the times he can be found on a mound of pillows mushing and cuddling, all of his own doing. He’s expert climbing and sliding without any assistance because of the 4 words he DOES have, 3 of them are “ME DO IT!” although no one else would understand it because it sounds like, “MEyoueeeee”. He has this ability to just know when people are not well, physically, emotionally or mentally. In fact, we were coming out of an elevator the other day, and a woman was waiting to walk in. 2 seconds before the door closes, Austin rips outta my hands, runs towards the elevator, into the woman’s legs and hugs her. She immediately reached down and picked him up, he hugged her, and she cried. “I just needed that and you knew”. The most beautiful thing? He let her hug him and he hugged her right back. Normally, i wouldnt be cool with this sort of thing at all, but he is such a special boy. Love, Joy, and a different kind of innocence exudes from this kid. Also, everyone keeps INSISTING I get him a haircut. NOPE! So glad he’s ours…

Being all patriotic!

Ice Pops are his absolutely FAVE!

One of the handful of words he knows is “CHEESE”

Scheming lakeside

Rainbow Avenger

Sleepy time cuddly boy

*The Wife is working hard, getting promoted every time we have some major life event happening (2 promotions in less than 4 months!), still interested in fostering/producing more babies now that we have a big HOUSE (more on that later!), momming on level EXPERT, and still being an amazing wife to me even though I have been a less than stellar wife to her (not excusable, but you’ll understand…read on!). Also…still the hottest woman I know, and still the best thing that could have happened to me.

Me and my Love

❤ ❤ ❤

Always feeling lucky with this lady

A “whaley” great time on family vacation 7/17

So about 1000 words in (you are seriously long winded Sammie, sheesh!), the real reason for this post. “Sleeves in Summer” is alllllll about the surgery that I had a month ago. On 7/6/2017 at 6am, I went in to have weight loss surgery. A month and 3 days later I am down 31 lbs and under 200lbs, which hasn’t been a thing for me in 17 years. Since 2000, which happens to be my junior year which is why I remember it so vividly and accurately. I remember declining going to the senior prom with a friend because I couldn’t fathom trying to find a “fat dress” since I was over 200lbs and all of my friends were all wered double 0 and shopping at Aber.Crombie which, I couldnt fit in my luscious size THIRTEEN jeans! Seriously! a freaking 13!!! Like, Marilyn Monroe wore a 13 and I wouldn’t go to Macy’s and get a dress from the “Plus size” section! So this has been a thing for as long as I can remember.

Weight loss surgery was something that came up before with my PCP, but we always sorta said, “You’re young. You have time. You can always lose weight later”, but all things said and done, weight loss never happened. I have tried EVERYTHING with the exception of Weight Watchers (mainly because I’m cheap but also because I freaking hate routine on my free time). Curves, Insulin Resistance Diet, diet pills, dieting, exercise, food restrictions, boot camp, you name it! It would work for a few weeks, and then i would just plateau or gain it all back. We discussed a little more after seeing the endocrinologist how my hormones and PCOS plays a huge role in my weight loss plan, but ultimately, it was the MAIN reason I could now lose weight and KEEP it off. I could go into very exact and medical reasons for not losing weight due to PCOS, but generally speaking, hormonal imbalance due to PCOS makes it difficult to lose weight, and losing weight is the only tried and true way to “cure” PCOS. SO since i was about 16, it’s been this vicious cycle of +/- 50lbs every few months, which you can imagine is NOT GOOD for a human body. So after I gave birth to Austin, Callie and I decided to look into this as a solution for a lot of my medical issues (also tied in with PCOS {and because of PCOS} is HBP, High Cholesterol, High Glucose, Sleep Apnea, and ulcers in my stomach. Throw all of those health issues into the mix with 4 beautiful children and a hopefully LONG ASS LIFE, and nothing was jiving, so we decided that this was the best option.

I’ll say, there were two times when I thought it was the WORST possible thing I could have done. I cried my face off saying, “WHAT HAVE I DONE!? I’ve ruined my life!” But a month and 3 days out, 31lbs down, BP normal averaging at 127/65 (my average was usually 160/100), sleeping ALL NIGHT, and all the size 38 and 40 and XXL and XL stuff out of my closet, I have to say, best decision I could have ever made! I may not have loads of energy now (portions are literally less than a quarter of what I used to eat so still adjusting to getting in the correct amount of protein a day which BTW is TOTALLY a process and entirely time consuming) but it feels like I’m getting back to my old self every day, and I wouldn’t change anything about this decision. Heartburn is the WORST thing i have ever experienced (never had heartburn EVER prior to surgery), but all in all, feeling good, and doing good.

I originally didn’t want to tell people that I was having this surgery. I just didnt want people talking shit or making assumptions about me being lazy, or about me not “wanting to lose weight enough to do it naturally” (yes, someone actually said that!!! I KNOW!), but then I reminded myself, “MY life, my story, how I want it!” And i did it. And i couldn’t be happier. Well, I’d be happier if I could have chocolate ice cream with chocoloate fudge, topped with Oreas and chocolate sauce! MMMMMM! Chocolate!