For the past month I have been working out nearly every day. I alternate between a bunch of Turbo Jam DVDs and various exercise programs I rent from Amazon Unbox (primarily Tae Bo, although I just tried a Crunch Boot Camp video that featured totally cheesy people but was gratifyingly ass-kicking), and I do strength training with hand weights.

I have also been dieting. No, I haven’t been “making good food choices for a sensible long-term healthy eating plan”, I have been fucking dieting and there’s a difference you know. I mean, when you’re eating rice cakes and baby carrots on a regular basis it’s a DIET. When you are using a measuring cup to dole out food portions it’s a DIET.

All has not been in vain; I’ve lost almost 10 pounds and all sorts of muscles are re-emerging on my body. This morning I saw a deltoid AND a triceps. On the same arm! And I am not even lying when I tell you my ass has moved north by at least three-quarters of an inch. My whole ass, for real. I guess all those flailing back kicks are doing some good, although I don’t know if I’ll ever stop feeling like a brain-damaged donkey when I do them.

HOWEVER. Despite the Tae Bo Ab Workout, the Turbo Jam Ab Jam, and countless minutes spent shooting murderous glances down towards the pillowy flesh erupting from the top of my jeans, my midsection remains a post-baby trainwreck. Things are loose, things are wrinkly, things are abundant in nature. I don’t even know what all is going on down there, whether it’s leftover fat I need to burn off or if the muscles themselves got stretched out and wonky and are unable to perform their assigned Containment Duties or WHAT.

I thought I’d torture myself by trying on my Joe’s Jeans and um . . . well, here’s how they fit at the moment:
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Maybe it’s hard to tell in that photo but the only way I could button those sumbitches is if I were willing to be rescued by a team of firefighters using the Jaws of Life afterwards.

Here’s a tantalizing side view of my, ah, protuberance, and jeez I can’t believe I’m posting this:
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(Um, pardon the explosion of laundry visible in the background there.)

(Also, isn’t it funny how body image changes so drastically during and after pregnancy? If I were 20 weeks pregnant I would be THRILLED to show you that picture.)

(Also also, keep in mind that shows everything stuffed into a snug pair of stretchy pants, for all of our comfort levels I will spare you the bare-skin photo.)

(THUS ENDETH THE PARENTHETICALS.)

I know it’s only been a couple of months, I’m just feeling very very impatient to lose the Buddha Belly and be able to wear my clothes again. I also have this growing worry that no matter what I do, the belly is what it is: a vacated domicile that sustained some long-term damage from the last tenant. I should have taken out renter’s insurance! Or, you know, I maaaaaaybe shouldn’t have eaten my own weight in ice cream on a daily basis through the last half of 2007.

PS. First person to say “nine months up, nine months down” has to change a poopy diaper. And he’s been working on a BIG one all morning.
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Lately I am feeling about a thousand miles away from this emotional territory—so far away, in fact, that re-reading those words is almost like reading someone else’s journal. Who was that constantly fussy, pain-in-the-ass baby I was writing about, I wonder. Surely not the low-maintenance grinning butterball *I* know.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring, but things are going very well at the moment. Dylan is, in many ways, an entirely different creature than he was a few weeks ago. The smiling helps, for sure, but he’s also eating much more comfortably (I’m currently using a soy formula, the turbo-barfing stopped on its own but I think the soy helps with the gassiness. I mean, if anyone’s taking notes on this thrilling subject, or anything), he’s settling into a schedule of sorts, and while he is not sleeping through the night—WOE—he is at least allowing me enough sleep to make it through the day. I’m almost getting used to that 3:30 AM wakeup call at this point. Well, in the same way you’d get used to someone whaling you in the kneecap with a ballpeen hammer, which is to say I don’t particularly enjoy it, but, you know, it’s survivable.

God, those early weeks sucked. You guys, THAT SUCKED. I’m sure there’s plenty more suckage ahead, but thank god I’m standing over here and not back over there. In the dark. With the ice weasels.

(Those of you who gently reminded me that things would get better, thank you. You were right.)

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Lastly: can someone please reassure me that the world does not need pithy one-sentence status updates on the minutiae of my life, and thus it is okay to not have a Twitter account? What is wrong with me that I am all itchy over the notion that I’m missing the boat, even though it’s a boat I have no desire to be on?

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