That'll Teach Me to Stay On the Couch*

Back in January, Aaron joined a local running group in an effort to get in better shape and to train for a 10K. He did such an awesome job, and surpassed his goal, running a half-marathon distance a couple of times (and planning to sign up for a half sometime soon). I am super proud of him, and also super impressed. He did so great, and runs regularly at an under 9 minutes per mile pace, no matter the distance. He ran a 10K at the end of May and killed it!

So, following his lead, and wanting to get in better shape, too, I signed up for the running group, and official training starts Saturday morning. However, there were some unofficial training events this week, including a promotional trail run that Aaron was also interested in, so we decided to go for that run on Tuesday night.

We got to the park, and I was super excited and motivated to do this thing! Aaron had the girls in the stroller, so he was walking/jogging while I ran on ahead. I was making great time and was a half mile into the trail, when disaster/a tree root struck, and I sprained my ankle. Bad. Excuse the grossness of this (and the picture below), but there was a crunching sound. I thought for sure I had broken my ankle.

Thankfully, there is an x-ray equipped redi-med right outside the park where we were running so, after walking that 1/2 mile back out of the woods (OUCH!) Aaron drove me right there. In the picture (again, sorry for the grossness) the top-left picture is how my ankle looked immediately after the fall. Not too promising for a minor injury, right? The doctor said he was impressed by the swelling, and that it's not good to impress a doctor. They took x-rays and determined that the bones look fine, but I definitely have a bad sprain. I'm on the RICE (Rest - Ice - Compression - Elevation) plan, and have an air cast and crutches (if I need them), and it's starting to look better (the other three shots are how it looked yesterday - the swelling isn't completely gone, but it's much better). The bruising was new as of yesterday.



So, my plans for training are on hold for the time-being. I can't believe I did this a half-mile into my first run, and I'm super mad at myself, even though I know it was an accident. Aaron keeps telling me not to beat myself up about it, but I can't help it. I'm feeling a little depressed because, not only can I not run, I really can't do anything right now, and I feel helpless, which I totally hate. Aaron is being super awesome about running the house, but I can also tell he's stressed, so between the stress and the self-pity we both have short tempers right now, which sucks.

I'm already plotting how to make this up to him, and so far my ideas include sending him up to hang out with his brother and go fishing or something. Or perhaps buy him a nice 6 pack of beer and take the girls out so he can play video games for an afternoon or evening. Whatever it is, I owe him a huge debt.

*This has been our running joke, but rest assured: I will get back off the couch as soon as I can.

The Things We're Doing These Days

I was sick last week with some sort of weird bug that had me down for the count with a headache, light-headedness, a little bit of congestion, and a whole lot of exhaustion. I am feeling better for the most part, save for still having a headache and now with the added fun of constant heartburn. So what I'm saying is, I kind of feel like crap still and planning to have tomato soup for dinner tonight was not my smartest idea ever. What proves to be even a less smart idea is that I'm still totally going to eat that tomato soup because it sounds really damn delicious.

Not feeling well, of course, put me in an excellent mood over the weekend. Aaron caught the bug, too, coming down with it on Friday (which actually made me a little better, because the symptoms are so weird I thought maybe it was just me, but no! Confirmation!). So we shared that excellent mood. The girls fed off of our bad moods, so it was really fun to be in our house this weekend, I'm sure.

Despite our household-wide surliness, we did have some fun this weekend. Gabbie got to go to the neighborhood park and play with the neighborhood kids. Reportedly they played some sort of tag (Aaron went along and also played tag, while Sophie and I napped), which sounds like a lot of fun. There aren't many kids Gabbie's age in the neighborhood, but there are a lot of girls, who have adopted Gabbie as one of their own, and if she's around they include her in their games. It's pretty fantastic.

Sophie is working really hard at walking. She can actually walk, but lacks the confidence to do so. She'll walk halfway across the room, stop when she realizes what she's doing, and then she'll drop and crawl. Alternately, she'll wait until we're all watching, take a few steps, then stand there and clap for herself. She's pretty darn adorable, overall.

I'm really excited for Aaron, who started with a running group last night through a local shoe store. I think this will be really good for him and it sounds like a great group. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little jealous, because I totally am. This will definitely be an adjustment, as he'll be out of the house for runs two nights a week and on Saturday mornings until his 10K in May. However, I'm all about it given his family history and my desire to keep him around for a long time. One of his grandpas died in his forties from a sudden and massive heart attack, and I'd like to avoid that happening to him if at all possible. So, support for excersize it is! I can't wait to go cheer him on in his sure-to-be many races in the future!

As for me, well, I'm working on things. I need to get out of the house more too. I feel kind of bad that my hermit-tendencies make Aaron feel bad for wanting to go out and do things with other people. I need to make more friends and find time for the friends I already have. I'm sure once Sophie is a little less dependent on me due to nursing, I'll be more likely to feel like I can go out. I meant to sign up for a cake decorating class at Joann's this month, but forgot to do it on Saturday, which ended up being the first day of the month-long class. Hopefully they'll offer it again soon! We're also talking about finding a church we can all agree on, with families with young kids, and then possibly we can make some friends there. I'm still in that being-a-mom-is-lonely phase of babyhood and I'm starting to get itchy to get out of it.

Getting Fitter

(That title was mostly to bug my husband who insists that very few words should be modified with an -er because it sounds weird to him. So I do it regularly to annoy him. Ask him about "vaguer" sometimes - like nails on a chalkboard and as hilarious as someone falling down.)

So, I'm finally committing to lose some weight and get into better shape. It doesn't hurt that we have a weight-loss competition going on through the fitness center at work. This gave me some excellent motivation to literally get off my butt and do something about the *cough30poundscough* baby weight I still have hanging around. Well, I guess technically it isn't baby weight, but I gained it while gestating, so it's all her fault and I'm sticking to that excuse.

So far, it's been going pretty well. Over the past three weeks I'm down a little more than 6 pounds, which isn't bad, but I'd like to do better. I'm counting calories, but the past week has been full of poor food choices. Ironically (I think I'm using that right) this week when I ate more than others in recent history and exercised less too resulted in my largest weight loss to date (2.5 pounds). Also, those 6 pounds were apparently enough of a loss to allow me to now remove my pants without undoing them, so there's that. It's always encouraging to start seeing the difference. I love it when you can start to see the difference.

So, I think that in order to do even better I'm going to start either the 30 Day Shred or a Couch to 5K program sometime in the next couple of days and focus on eating many more fruits and vegetables and drinking more water, and see where that gets me. I'm so ready to shed some more pounds. I want them to be gone. And then of course I'm sure they'll all come rushing back as soon as I get pregnant again, but oh well. At least I'm figuring out how to get them off so I'll have that experience to build on next time.

Un-Fun

My fun thing for yesterday (which might not sound like much fun) was a 30 minute workout on the elliptical machine at our work gym. I also did 30 minutes of EA Active, so I felt like a superhero. I love the elliptical almost as much as I love step classes, so it felt good to get back on one.

But today. Today is apparently my un-fun day. Un-fun thing number 1 is that the swim class that I signed Gabbie and I up for is cancelled because we were the only people that signed up. But at least that negates un-fun thing number two which was going to be swim suit shopping. I think that's the most un-fun thing ever.

So instead, we're going out to eat for dinner, which is fun. I also had some delicious Indian food (and a basket of naan) for lunch, so that was fun too. All this fun today is negating my fun from yesterday. Also I think I said fun too much in this post (10 times).

Meow.

Elsewhere

Just a quick note: I have a question featured today at Bodies in Motivation. This is a great site, so you should check it out regardless!

One Sexy Mama (at least that's the goal)

If you asked me how I've felt since Gabbie was born, I could give you several words to encompass my feelings: joyful, thankful, grateful, awed, amazed, humored, tired... The list goes on and on. One word that you won't find on that list, though, is sexy. I haven't felt sexy since about the middle of my pregnancy, and counting back, that means I really haven't felt sexy for nearly two years.

I need to get my groove back, in the worst way.

I'm still overweight; I lost 20 pounds in the first couple of weeks after she was born and the scale hasn't moved much since. I have a saggy stomach still. My boobs, well, let's just say they'll never be the same. My stretch marks have mostly faded, but the texture of my skin down there is a nightmare. Don't get me wrong, I never expected to bounce back and look exactly the same as I did pre-baby. I've seen what I looked like at 41 weeks pregnant. You can't come back from that.

But, I can make some progress. It's going to take some work, but I'm at the point I'm willing to put in that work. I need to eat better. I've already cut out fast food and am weaning myself of soda. I'm going to add physical activity to my routine, because I know that's the only way I can really get in a better shape; plus it helps with my seasonal depression, so now is the best time for me to start a routine again.

As of this evening, I've been felled by some sort of stomach bug, but when I'm feeling better I'm taking a picture of how I look now. I might even post it (with much apology before and after for subjecting you all to the sight). I just know that now is my time to do this, because I have 20 pounds to lose to be at a good starting point for getting pregnant again, which we expect to start on early next year. That gives me about 4 months to lose that 20 pounds, which I think is totally doable. If I do the work, that is.

So far this week...

It has been a busy week for us around here, but most of all for Gabbie. (There are lots of exclamation points ahead; gird yourself.) So far this week she has:

• Gotten over a cold (finally!)
• Started crawling!
• Started waving bye-bye!
• Is working on two teeth. Two!
• And has slept through the night. Twice! (Oh, my word, I don't know what I'm going to do with this much sleep!)

So far this week, I have:

• Worked out once! Which is more than I've worked out (outside of taking walks) since probably October 2007. 
• I also made Lasagna Soup , which we enjoyed very much.

So, it's been an exciting week so far. It will be more exciting if Gabbie's teeth (her first) finally break through and we can quit it with all the miserable whining that she has been treating us to!

Just because I want to remember

90 degrees in the gym.
5 minutes of jogging.
2 minutes of walking lunges.
3 minutes of jogging.
20 push-ups.
30 seconds plank.
20 squat thrusts.
20 laps jogging backwards.
15 push-ups.
30 seconds plank.
30 lat raises.
20 squat thrusts.
30 seconds mountain climber.
30 shoulder presses.
30 squats.
30 seconds mountain climber.
20 lat raises.
20 shoulder presses.
15 squat thrusts.
50 crunches.
20 seconds plank.
Finally, stretches!

And all of this after 30 semi-easy (but still enough to get my heart-rate up) minutes on the elliptical machine.

I may not be able to move tomorrow. But I'd say I'm definitely working on my fitness. I can't believe I signed up for 4 weeks of sessions like this. 1 down, three to go.