Made Through Week 3

Week three of Pretty Fierce: Weight loss (Lindsey Brin) has taken me longer than a week to finish.  My family got hit pretty hard with the stomach flu and I lost two days recovering myself.  Just getting a taste of what it is like to sleep in until 6 A.M. instead of 5:40 A.M. spoiled me just enough to not want to get up when the alarm is ringing.  I got to cheat a little on my early morning workouts this week as Monday was a holiday and my husband was home from work.  There are optional outdoor workouts that I never do because it is usually dark and cold, but I took advantage of the sun and a much needed break from our house and did some interval running for 35 minutes.  It was great.  I love the trails near my house for this.

Two days after being sick I stepped on the scale thinking I probably should at some point.  It was in the garage to stop me from being obsessive about the scale.  It is too easy to feel like one is making no progress when the scale doesn't move for weeks.  So to my surprise the scale moved more than I could imagine.  I was 120.5 when I started working out and two and half weeks in I was 114.  This was too good to be true and my body has since settled into 117, which is still less than I did after Ellie was born (baby 2) and before I got pregnant with Dominic. 

No I am challenged with my focus.  I nameless person asked me, "Why do you keep saying you want to get back to where you were?"  I guess the concept of "getting back" doesn't really work.  Let's face it there are six kids, I'm 31 years old, and my body will have the marks of pregnancy probably forever, not to mention some gray hair.  Maybe it is not getting back, though when I say that I am not erasing my children in that mix, I am talking about being strong and having my body look like it did before having children maybe I should build some more goals.

When one has been pregnant more than not it is easy to think, after every baby, I will finally remember what it is like to be me again.  However, me, has changed right?  Me has a baby or two or sometimes six.  Who is me then?  I am trying to figure that out too.  Am I getting back to a girl barely out of college?  No, that cannot be right.  Am I trying to figure out what it means to be thirty one and really an adult.  Is this a mid life crisis?

My goals for the future have always included being married and having lots of kids.  I never realized that wonder woman with 48 hour days was also on the list.  If I did everything I wanted to do I would never sleep again.  In college my schedule looked something like this:
8:00 A.M. press snooze bar
9:00 A.M. wake up
10:00 A.M. super early class
11:00 A.M. class
12:00 P.M. work at The Kid's place during lunch
1:00 P.M. class
2:30 P.M. serious nap
4:00 P.M. start homework?
5:30 P.M. dinner
7:30 P.M. ballet
9:00 P.M. Go to the library and get all the homework I did not finish done
3:00 A.M. Bedtime

Think about how many wasted hours are in the schedule!  I had no idea that was such an easy life.  This is my schedule now:
5:30 nurse baby
5:40 workout
6:20 shower
6:30 eat breakfast
8:00 get baby back to sleep for nap
8:30 homeschool-family reading
9:00 snack
9:30 more homeschool
10:45 think about getting the kids to clean up and the eat lunch
11:30 little kids need a nap, School kids have some kind of educational game to play
2:00 Nap is over, try to play outside
3:00 Dinner prep
4:00 other than Tues. we eat (Tues is dance class night)
5:00 wind down
6:00 and 6:30 bedtime for kids
7:00  Mommy and Daddy time, RubyRumps sewing, writing...etc
10:00 sleep.

Yes life is different.  Sometimes I am crying other times I amazed at how much one can pack into a day.  :)  The person who challenged me with the concept of "getting back" is right.  I cannot get back to old me, but I can make a new better me.  I long to be a loving wife and good mother.  Sometimes my attitude needs some help too.  Other than trying to change the outside, I plan to work on my mind too.  Maybe a I need a  reading list.  I am open to hearing about some good books.