Walk the walk...

Oh...and I am not referring to idiom games this time! This fall our family for the second time will be participating in a local Prader-Willi Syndrome walk which is the same month as our son's birthday. (he's going to be 14...eeek! :) With PWS we have to watch everything he eats, everything. Fortunately he has never been overweight but if he was not monitored it could happen easily and quickly. Individuals with PWS never feel hungry. They spend a lot of time thinking about food and when their next meal or snack will be. They also (I know it's a fact in my son's case) think about opportunities to forage food when it is available and no one is looking. Can you even imagine what it would be like to always be thinking about food? I know people are often humored by the fact that 75% of my son's conversations involve food or come around to the topic of food. People do not mean any harm in thinking it's funny, and I truthfully am not offended but seriously...can any of us really imagine what it is like to be THAT HUNGRY? 

I've mentioned our adult friend that has PWS (V) on here before. I remember quite awhile back on Facebook her posting on a Prader-Willi board saying that she wished her mom would lock food up. I think the reasoning it wasn't locked up was that she was so high functioning that the mom thought it would be wrong to lock up the food. At least that was my take on it. But, that is when we started making sure food was secured, and that we had an alarm for when he walked out of his room. Ever since then he has been sleeping through almost every night (he was getting up multiple times every night) and WE are sleeping better too. Yes, he has still manages to sneak food in the day time but it has gotten so much better. He actually reminds and thanks us when we set our hallway alarm.

The thing is I need to lose weight. No, I am not extremely overweight but I am overweight and it has been a gradual process since becoming a mom. I eat pretty healthy and we walk daily but I need to lose weight. How can I say anything about what my son eats if I am the one that needs to lose weight and he is the one that is a healthy weight? Before kids I was underweight...I do NOT want to go back to that at all! I like having curves. ;) But I have made it my goal to lose 20 pounds before the first of November. I know my body will feel better AND I feel I will be a better example to both kids if I walk the walk...literally. This is the first I have shared it in my blog but I started the first of August and have lost 3 pounds...so I am on my way and hope to share good results.

On a homeschool note our first week is done! It wasn't smooth and we tried our best to squeeze a couple night vacation into it...but got rained out. Thankfully we were able to get half our money back and we will try to go camping again if it ever stops raining. It was a really good week though and we celebrated Z~girl's 12th *gulp* birthday. I do admit we did some school on Saturday too with little complaint...OK A~man did a little but he is especially liking his online science curriculum and learning about magnets for kids. Tomorrow Z~girl is going to start her end of summer newspaper edition so I hope to share that soon!