Thursday, October 25, 2012

Fall mini-goals

I've been having a bit of an up-and-down attitude about my current situation.  I was actually in a good mood about my broken hand situation for a long time.  I felt that I could get back on track for the marathon, that I was managing daily life pretty well, and that I was lucky and the injury could have been much worse.  Then I fell again and decided to pull out of the marathon, and stopped running, and started eating a lot of stuff I shouldn't, partly out of stress.  This week, my husband's been gone and the kids have been pretty awful, to the point that I cried multiple times yesterday.  I'm missing the rush I get from exercise, and physical therapy has suddenly gotten pretty painful (to the point where I am sweating and squirming and grabbing my seat in pain - sort of like mini-labor).  Today I asked the physical therapist what she though about my progress, and as I suspected, it's not as good as she'd like.  Which is understandable, since with 2 toddlers and no help around, it's been impossible to do my exercises as often as I should.

I decided today that I would go for a run, with my splint to protect my hand.  I just got back and I already feel better.  In a matter of a couple weeks, I went from being an active runner ready for a half-marathon and well on her way to a full one, who felt confident and healthy,who was ready for an awesome cross-country ski season, to someone who is becoming a couch potato and couldn't even keep herself from snacking on cookies every time she felt a bit of stress (and the amount of stress I felt yesterday worked out to about 15 cookies).

So.  I need a goal again.  And I have a few in mind.  My mini-goal deadline is Thanksgiving, which the hope of re-establishing some good habits.

I'm still signed up for a 10k for November 17.  Until then, I will run 3 times per week, 3-5 miles each time.  I will work out at least 2 other days per week by doing exercises at home or going for a bike ride if my husband is home. 

I will not snack between meals (possibly except of fruit, I'll see how it goes).  I'll go back to my usual schedule of a healthy breakfast (usually a slice of whole-wheat bread with cream cheese, or yogurt and cereal), lunch (need to get this healthier), afternoon coffee, and dinner without second helpings.  Dessert for special occasions only or nights out.  No more cookies!  Coffee only once a day, and don't drink it if I don't really feel like it.  Tea is fine in the morning or evening.  Try to eat fruit after every meal.  I've done this kind of diet for years, I don't know why it feels so hard now.

I'd like to have a few other goals, and one thing I want to work on is gratitude.  I was doing well for a while with no goal or program - I really wasn't at all down about my accident and surgery.  I felt that things could have been a lot worse, and I was lucky.  And it was all true.  But then when I lost my long-term goal of training for a marathon after two months of hard work and good results, followed by a week of really difficult two-year-old behavior, I lost a bit of perspective.  I want to get that back.  So here's to that - to trying to get my perspective back with a bit of good, old-fashioned gratitude.

Starting with: today, at this moment, I am grateful my husband is on his way home.  I'm grateful I have made at least SOME progress with my physical therapy.  I'm grateful my friend and my sister are coming over tonight for a crafting night.  I'm grateful for all the good food I've been eating and will continue to eat.  I'm grateful for mochas, and now especially salted caramel mochas (maybe that's not a good thing to be grateful for).  I'm grateful for my general good health. 

It's a good life.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

I have not felt like blogging because my broken hand is still in a splint, so typing is a royal pain, but we are still having sleep issues, so I am sitting with my computer in Turtle's room in the dark while he is definitely not sleeping.  I actually have a lot of non-computerish things to do, such as cleaning up the kitchen and assembling the lasagne I will be serving to my mom and her friends tomorrow for lunch, so it is rather inconvenient to be stuck in here.

Otherwise, life is good.  And busy.  I am in physical therapy for my hand, which has been painful, rough, and slow-going, but at least I'm making progress.  I can tell it will be a long while before I can climb again.  I wonder how long it will be until I can type normally?

I've given up the marathon, which has been a bit depressing.  I started running again and then one day I fell again.  I was super lucky and didn't reinjure my finger, but it freaked me out and I'm ready to wait for another year or two or five.

We went on vacation!  It was so fun.  We went to Cancun for 9 days, and my in-laws flew over from Italy to meet us.  We mostly stayed at our resort, ate a lot, swam a lot, slept a lot, and played a lot, and it was a blast for everyone.  I rigged a secondary splint for myself out of athletic tape and drugstore finger splints, so I could go in the water, but my activity was pretty limited.

The kids are fabulous, as always.  They're so smart and funny, every day is awesome, although some days are also long, tiring, and frustrating.  They speak 100% Italian with us at home, although they clearly understand English.  They get into moods, especially Tadpole, where they just talk nonstop, every thought pops into their heads spewing immediately out of their mouths.  It's hilarious.

I try really hard not to gender-stereotype them (except their clothing to some degree, but it's pretty mild), but their toy preferences do seem to skew a bit towards the gender stereotypes.  They actually mostly overlap, but Turtle is slightly more into trucks, fire engines, and tractors, and Tadpole is slightly more into stuffed animals (well, animals in general).  They both like purses and hair bows, pretending to cook, running, jumping, climbing, wrestling, coloring, pushing strollers/shopping carts, reading, music, dancing, etc.

Turtle, as always, has more patience and is more interested in solving problems, such as putting puzzles together.  He likes musical instruments more than Tadpole, too, and plays the harmonica as well as strumming the little cheap guitar we got them in Cancun.  He also loves playing with our box of cars and trucks, and helping us cook, which he can do really well because he is generally patient and can follow directions.  He loves reading, and his favorite books lately are all about cars or tractors.  He is getting picky about his clothes - he likes the color red, or otherwise he wants clothes with a tractor or car or motorcycle on it.  I swear I have not done anything to push motorized vehicles around here!  Maybe he's picking it up at preschool?

Tadpole, on the other hand, is generally very impatient, at least relatively speaking, and while she can follow directions if she wants to, she usually prefers to modify the activity to suit her needs.  Placing sliced carrots into a bowl is much less fun than moving them back and forth from bowl to counter over and over.  She does a lot of role-playing, much more than Turtle.  In any given game, whether she's playing with animals, cars, balls, etc., there's always a mama and a baby, and sometimes a daddy, too, and she has imaginary conversations between all her made-up characters.  She loves to read, but I haven't noticed much in the way of a preference for any particular kind of book.  She's also not super picky about her clothes, at least not yet.  Whew.

Potty training (or "toilet learning", which I don't actually say, but I hate the term "training" used for kids, it sounds like one is talking about a dog) is not going anywhere.  We've been really laid-back and just suggest using the toilet here and there and generally we don't get any interest.  I'm feeling like my husband is ready to start pushing a bit harder (ha), but I don't know.  Turtle actually peed in the potty once, not intending to, and it scared him and now he wants nothing to do with it.  Tadpole is not patient enough to wait for something to happen.  I'm not sure how to gently encourage without being too pushy, since I think being too insistent might result in a lot of resentment and stronger refusal.  I keep hoping for a more natural breakthrough, that they'll give us some indication that they're ready.

Since bedtime has been a bit rough, I've also been thinking about moving them to beds.  Turtle slept in a bed in Mexico, although he fell out the last night.  Yesterday at naptime, I put them both in Turtle's room, with Tadpole in a pack'n'play, and at one point I saw that Turtle was trying to climb out of his crib.  So it might be just about time to make the switch.

And that's my update.  Turtle FINALLY fell asleep and it is 9:40 and I have tons to do, so off I go.