She didn’t kill me afterall

About two months ago, I wrote about how my dear friend was trying to destroy me by making me get fit. It turns out she failed, at the destroying me part, not the getting fit part.

This morning I woke up and ran 4.4km. I double and tripled checked after I got home by searching “How far did I run” in Google, yup 4.4 km. Two months ago, that would have seemed an insurmountable feat, but today I just did it, and was close to thinking, “perhaps this run wasn’t long enough”. I said close to, but not actually thinking that.

Friend is now trying to talk me into running a 10K with her January. When she first brought it up last week I mocked, I laughed, I said that it is not physically possible. But after this morning, it doesn’t seem so far fetched; fitness and healthy living may in fact be within my grasp.

So what other side effects have come out of this fitness thingy? Well, I have lost almost no weight, which may not seem like a good thing, but I have lost some which means I haven’t gained any, and that is a spectacular reversal of the trend from the first half of 2014.

I can keep up with my kids better, which makes weekends a lot more interesting and less screamy.

I sleep at night, or at least most nights, which also means I don’t feel like taking naps at my desk everyday anymore, now it’s only like every other day.

All in all, I will admit, this hasn’t been a totally bad experience. I wouldn’t say it has been a totally good experience either though, there were moments when I wanted to commit violence against our trainer dude, but I was of course too exhausted to do so. There have also been moments when I have wanted to fall down and give up, but I was even too exhausted to do that. On top of that my ego takes a hit every single fitness session, because I feel like I am making no progress and I am still required to cheat on a least one or two exercises to survive. I am of course called out every single time I cheat, but the others don’t realise I am doing it for them, my lifeless body would be heavy for them to carry back if I actually tried to keep up.

So, I take back, you may not have been trying to kill me, it might be that perhaps you are a caring person who wants to help me feel better…perhaps.

I don’t have any babies left

I spent the better part of the first four years of my son’s life mourning my carefree, newlywed existence. I missed everything from sleeping, to nights out with Hubby, to time with my friends having adult conversations that didn’t involve bodily fluids (seriously who knew as a parent you would be talking so regularly and so openly about so much unpleasantness).

About 6 months ago, I think I finally accepted parenthood to it’s fullest, to do that, I just took my life back. I made room for time alone, time away from the kids and time with my friends. It was like breathing again. So it’s been 6 months of mostly enjoying my kids.

Then suddenly this weekend I looked at my kids and realised, my babies aren’t babies anymore. My little girl has real person proportions. I’m not crazy, I swear this is a thing. You know how babies can barely touch their hands over top of their heads because their heads are so big for the bodies. When adults reach their arms over their heads, the top of their head is somewhere around their elbow. Well, Squishy reached her arms up this weekend, and the top of her head was around her elbow…real person proportions.

Not only that but she now calls it her blanket…can you believe that crap??? She has spent a year calling it her blanklet, and it was so cute and now, out of nowhere, she says it correctly.

Not only that, but toilet training is no longer “training”, she’s fully house trained, no more diapers. It just seems unnatural to do the weekly groceries without buying hundreds of diapers and wipes.

But not only that, she sat down and did a 100 piece puzzle this weekend, by herself. Okay, that was actually pretty cool, because she is not even three yet, but oh my god, where did my baby go?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not mourning my life with babies, those years were challenging, exhausting, frustrating and generally sleep deprived. Then there was the weight loss and weight gain, the mood swings, the traveling everywhere with at least 20kg of crap, and the crying (okay that still happens, but at least now I generally know why and it is less frequently me).

It is just that my baby girl is so not a baby anymore and it’s weirding me out, where did my babies go?

There is no point to making plans with preschoolers around

We are having a lazy Saturday. We had a quiet morning of puzzles and playgrounds, and a little bit of handyman work around the house. This afternoon, Hubby rested while the kids and I hung out in our awesome (and matching) deck chairs outside.

When nap time was over, and just to be clear, it was only Hubby who napped, we decided to quickly buy a raincoat for Crazy and head to the park Crazy has been asking for all week.

The sports store parking lot was full, which was mildly terrifying because we hate people…I mean we hate crowds, but since people make up crowds, I don’t think it’s a completely inaccurate extrapolation. We parked at the very far end next to a fence. On the other side of said fence is an airport.

We went to get the coat that Hubby had picked out on Wednesday, the coat that Crazy had refused to buy on Wednesday. On Thursday when Squishy put on her brand spanking new raincoat, suddenly Crazy just had to have that raincoat. So back we returned today. We fully expected that he would change his mind again when he saw it and were both pleasantly surprised that he was still excited to get it. He also wanted the cross bow that was in the same aisle, but oh well, I guess you can’t always get what you want.

Before getting back in the car, we asked if the kids wanted to watch a plane land before we left. The two little aerogeeks were thrilled, and so were the kids. So we watched one, two, three planes.

Me – “Hey kids, do you want to go to that park you pestered me about all week?”

Kids – “No, we want to play in the gravel in this parking lot watching the occasional plane land and take off.”

So that’s what we did…for an hour.

Their favourite part? Well, that would be the emergency truck driving up and down the runway shooting off flares to scare the birds away.

They are now soaking in bubbles in our attempt to get the inch thick gross off of them after their play time in dirty parking slash runway ick.

Maybe we will make to the park tomorrow.

Welcome back slippers

It’s one of those days where I woke up exhausted and just didn’t want to get out of bed, and my will to stay in bed is strong. It’s so strong that sometimes it overpowers me and makes me sick to my stomach, that’s how the day started.

Then I went to make tea, and was determined that the toaster was going to help me with this. I stared at it for awhile before remembering what I was actually trying to do.

The kids were exceptionally well behaved this morning and we were out the door on time, I was starting to think the day was picking up. This was especially true as I was leaving the school and saw all the parents arriving late, the ones who look freaked out and stressed and a bit panicked because it is only 8:30 and they are already late and exhausted. I know those parents, 4 days out 5 I am those parents.

Traffic was a nightmare, because it is raining, and since it only rains like 20 days out of the year here, people get all wired and weird on the road. Plus all the people who usually cycle or take a motor cycle take their car, so there were roughly twice as many cars as usual on the roads. Fun stuff.

I made it to work a solid 2 minutes early, great news. Then the day got all hectic and off plan – I like to plan my day, and for the last 6 months, I make a plan, and then I execute that plan. For the 6 years preceding that, if I managed to eat during the day, it was a good day. I have been lulled into a false sense of organizational security.

So hectic, busy, unplanned, running in the rain, uphill, blah blah blah, but whatever, my inbox is still under 20 and my to-do list still fits on one page, so not a total failure.

I made it home after more crappy traffic during which I only honked at one moron driver and opened the cupboard to grab my favourite wine glass to pour myself a reward for surviving another day. As I opened the cupboard things started falling on my head, nothing important a first, my travel coffee mug that I could whip against a wall and it wouldn’t be damaged, and then the glass.

It was like slow motion, and my survival instinct kicked it, I stopped moving, put my hands in front of my face just as the glass hit the counter and exploded. I am not exaggerating (much), it didn’t just break, it exploded. Hubby started screaming at the kids to get back a safe distance, and slippers were fetched out of storage, because nobody in our household wears slippers from May to December.

The major disadvantage to tiled floors are kids walk far too early because the tiled floors are too hard for them to crawl on and when glass breaks it travels to the farthest reaches of a room, so in this case, like 6 meters (or 20 feet for the metrically impaired). So I vacuumed once, ate dinner, vacuumed again, and I am still finding freaking shards. I can’t totally blame the tiled floors for that, it is also partly because I am moving and since the glass broke at nearly face height, my hair is now a moving glass dispenser.

I guess I could shower, but whatever, I’ll just grab a different glass instead and get down to the important things in life, in my slippers.