Did you hear the buzz in the running world this weekend? Don’t worry. I didn’t either until I read Beth’s blog, Shut up and Run. A new marathon record was set! 2:03:38 for a FULL MARATHON. 26.2 Miles. 26.2 miles in nearly 2 freaking hours! That is a pace of 4:43 min/miles. That is nothing short of amazing! I’ve never even run a half marathon that fast (although mark my words, I will! I’ve got high hopes for post-pregnancy running!).
Back to my reality………
I haven’t run since my accidental 7 mile run 9 days ago. In the real world, 9 days without running isn’t a big deal. In my world, 9 days without running feels like an eternity. Minus my 12 week break this past spring, I’ve been training for a race for the past 2 years. Since the Rock n Roll half, I am for the first time in my adult (consistent) running life running (or not running) without a training plan.
I love how my pregnant body held on to running so I could cross the finish line at my half marathon. Although my body had a huge part in my running those 13.1 miles, I think I have forgotten to give my mind some credit. My body could still be running 13.1 miles. It’s my brain that has turned off. It’s no surprise to me that running has become harder since the race. I’m not running for a goal anymore. I can justify 9 days of not running because I’m not training. While I’m not suggesting that everyone plans a 13 mile run during pregnancy, I think setting that goal is what made me stay strong and active (plus some luck and a very easy pregnancy).
Enjoying my 3:03:37 Pregnant Half-Marathon finish……….I swear it felt as good as setting a new world record
Let me be honest for 2 minutes: If I don’t have a plan written down on paper, I become quite lazy. When I become lazy, I become incredibly irritable. When I become incredibly irritable, I become mean. Do I need to continue? It’s a vicious cycle, and I can get stuck in it.
I know I said I was going to embrace the idea of not having a training plan for the rest of my pregnancy. I’m taking it back. I need a training plan to keep me mentally healthy. Don’t believe me? Ask my husband. He is the one who has to suffer through my bi-polar pregnant moments (Am I allowed to blame them on pregnancy?). In order to keep myself happy (and my family), I’ve created a new training plan to carry me through Weeks 27 – 32 of my pregnancy.
Here is my newly created “Keep Mama Sane” Training Plan:
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Sept 26th
Run
Run
Yoga
5+ miles
Oct 3rd
Run
Run
Yoga
5+ miles
Oct 10th
Run
Run
Yoga
Race for the Cure 5k
Oct 17th
Run
Run
Yoga
5+ miles
Oct 24th
Run
Run
Yoga
Wicked 10k
I’m keeping the plan simple.
Run – Mondays and Tuesdays (2-3 miles)
Yoga – Class on Thursdays (plus video at home any day of the week)
Long Runs – Weekend (5+ miles)
This will keep me moving up until the Wicked 10k at the end of the month. I will reevaluate my physical abilities at the end of October when I’m 32 weeks pregnant!
I think I can hear Christian sighing with relief already. I’m a much more enjoyable person when I’m running!
Yes. You’ve seen this before, but it is so true (for me!)
Have you checked out my updated “Running” tab? I’d love some imput on post-baby running and some marathon ideas. What is your “must-run” marathon?
Last year my sister made soup for her family nearly every weekend. I’ve decided to adopt this tradition for our family too. Nothing says “Hello Chilly weather” better than yummy soup on the stove (even if it is still hot and humid outside). The house smells great. It’s the best comfort food. Add it makes great lunch leftovers for the week.
Dinner was amazing! We also enjoyed some corn bread and fried zucchini. I’m on a bread, zucchini, corn kick this weekend.
I forgot to take a picture of my own
I must have been bit by the cooking bug because I also made Banana Zucchini Bread. It’s about time I used the banana I put in the freezer last week. I’m trying to find some healthier options for breakfast in our house. Cole is in the habit of having a pop tart, a sugary cereal, or chocolate chip muffins for breakfast every morning. I’d like these items to be a special treat instead of an everyday go-to item. I added a 1/2 cup of chocolate chips to the bread, and I’m calling it Chocolate Chip bread. Let’s hope it is a hit tomorrow morning.
Weekly Updates: After I hit publish on my post yesterday, I realized I’ve been a bit of a downer this week. Cole issues. Paint issues. I’m not going to lie. It has been a very grumpy pregnant week for me. I think the baby is growing. I’ve felt a new wave of hormones, I’m starving all the time, my belly is growing, new things are aching, and morning sickness is back (thanks to my non stop hunger).
Cole Issues – I’m trying to incorporate some activities into our weekly routine that can allow him to be succesful and activities that can allow him to fail without feeling like a failure. We love family games in our house. Cole is a very bad sport when it comes to game. I bought Monopoly this week since the game isn’t just about winning and loosing. It’s not an instant “you win” or “you lose” game. We played one game all weekend. It took him a few minutes to settle into the routine, but he is definitely grasping the concept of patience with the game. Not only did he love the game, but he kicked our butt.
Paint Issues – Coat #2 of the blue paint went up this morning. The tape came off this afternoon. Much better. Not perfect, but so much better. It doesn’t look like Chet colored his walls from my womb this time. I’ll post more about the whole event this week, but here is a sneak peek at the wall. If your on my Facebook page, Christian posted a picture too.
While I was busy slaving away in the kitchen :), the boys were enjoying their downtime. I love Sundays especially now that they are Soup-er. (Don’t let the picture fool you, I did my fair share of nothing today too!)
Maybe, just maybe, the paint in the baby’s room will be done tomorrow.We started last Sunday. Please let us be done this Sunday.
Rough Plaster Walls + Painters Tape DOES NOT EQUAL a crisp line (just in case you were wondering)
This is the look we were going for……..
If I wasn’t having a pregnant meltdown, I would have taken a picture of what we end up with……..but I was having a pregnant meltdown, so I didn’t take a picture.
As of tonight, we need at least two more coats on the bottom blue strip. My fingers and my toes are crossed that when the tape comes off this time, we will have lines that are even just a little crisp.
Baby Room with Plaster Walls + Not so simple paint technique DOES NOT EQUAL a Happy Pregnant Mom
Don’t be surprised if I paint the entire nursery blue tomorrow 🙂
Pop Quiz Time? Blue Skies or Dark Clouds? Pick one!
After my 5 minute breather yesterday afternoon, life decided to give me a pop quiz. Had I truly learned that lesson? Or was it just a fleeting thought? It’s easy to see the life lesson when sitting on the beach. Could I apply the theory to the real world?
When I got home from work yesterday, Christian was home. He had picked up a drum set for all the boys in our house from his friend (they are so kindly letting us keep it at our house until we buy it from them! It’s like layaway, but in our own home! Thank you Jon and Rachel!). If I’m going to have a house full of boys, we need a drum set! I love music despite my lack of music ability. Christian is incredibly talented musically. Cole loves music. I love a household full of music. Call me crazy, but I didn’t think twice about have drums in our house. For now the drums are in our garage. Christian and I told Cole to go out there to look around. We expected to hear excited. Maybe some banging. We didn’t hear anything. When Cole came back in the house, he said nothing. Did you see the drums in the middle of the garage? He saw them, and in that moment, he decided he didn’t want them anymore. My first thought – What kid doesn’t want a drum set? Really?
I know Cole well enough to know that this isn’t true. Cole didn’t see a drum set. He saw failure. He saw a drum set that he hadn’t mastered. He saw a drum set that he might not be perfect at when he starts to play.
Focused
Parenting my “perfect” child is challenging. It tries my patience. My initial reaction to his perfectionism is normally not what it should be. I get frustrated with him. I get frustrated with myself because I should be the perfect mom, right? I should know how to respond appropriate. I need to be better at recognizing when it is fear of failure that is fueling his bad behavior and not just bad behavior. (Any guesses who passed on the “perfect” gene to Cole?)
We struggled through the drum set melt down. I’m sure we will have a few more melt downs about the drums. I already have visions of him picking up the drumstick, hitting the drums once, and flopping them on the ground. Following this demonstration will comes words like See I told you I’m not good and I’m so bad at the drums. Those words will make my heart-break just a little. I’ll want to hug him and tell him to just keep trying (with an open mind). He will slump off to his bedroom. I’ll get frustrated. I’ll lose my patience as the self-hate talk continues. He will calm down. I’ll remember to breathe. We will talk about it. We will hug. Life will be just fine.
This is our cycle. I’m not sure it is a healthy cycle. I know I need better strategies to deal with his perfectionism. I know I need to start by letting myself of the hook for not being the perfect parent. I want to teach Cole coping skills. I want to teach him that perfect isn’t better. Sometimes failure is the best thing for us. I want him to learn that we have to start at the bottom. Nobody is perfect from day 1. Nobody is perfect on day 100.
One black cloud conquered. We were back in the sunshine…………….
Until it was time to conquer homework. Cole had math and spelling. He started to have a meltdown with the spelling words. He wasn’t speed sorting fast enough. He didn’t have enough room. We worked through that situation pretty easily. Whew.
Next up. Math.
Cole had to list 3 name equivalents for the #8 and #10. Name equivalent? 8 = 8. 10 = 10. Right? I asked Cole what they had discussed in class. He didn’t know. He had no clue what to do. I was no help. Cole had spent too much time drawing the perfect arrow on the bottom of his paper (several erased arrows were the proof of that theory) that he forgot to listen to the instructions.
I told him we would just do what we could, and I would send in a note to his teacher explaining why 2 problems were left undone. Yes! You guessed it! My “perfect” child wanted nothing to do with this solution. He needed to have the correct answer on his paper. He would get in trouble if he didn’t. He’d have to flip his behavior card. He would be a failure. Christian came to our rescue by calling our friend who is a teacher. She explained the terms to us. (Thank you Lindsay!) We were making progress. Cole still wanted nothing to do with it because he was afraid his teacher expected something different. He didn’t want to list the wrong answers.
Sweet Dreams Butter Bean!
Are you all exhausted from reading yet? I feel like I need to exhale after writing all of that down. I was completely exhausted by this point. What little patience was left was now completely gone. I didn’t have it in me to deal with another emotional meltdown over two small homework problems.
(And while all of this was going on, our cable and internet were disconnected from an apparent late payment despite that fact that I just payed our current invoice on the 15th? Not sure how a payment can be late when current invoices are being paid? Because we had no internet, we had no access to my bank information. Christian couldn’t get through to a person because we couldn’t find account number. Hello Stress! An hour later it was back on after Christian finessed his way through the customer service lines).
Please tell me you are exhausted at this point? I was done. I keep reminding myself that this was just a moment. I was trying to keep my Type-A personality in check will teaching my perfectionist child that it’s okay not to be perfect.
We tried to reason with Cole. We tried to explain that his teacher just wants him to try. We tried to tell him that it’s okay if one is wrong. None of this makes sense to him logically. In his world, he should be perfect. And I have no idea where to begin with parenting him when these situations occur now that they are becoming a part of our daily routine.
I don’t want to be the best mom. I just want to be the best mom for Cole. Every natural parenting skill I have inside of me goes against his natural tendencies to be perfect. I know I need to validate his feelings. His fear of failure is a very real feeling for him. I just need to learn how to navigate him through the dark clouds and back into the sun when these moments occur. I’m begging open to any suggestions, book recommendations, strategies…..Does something work for you? your child? How do I teach him to find the balance between his perfectionist side and the part of him that is our tiny Buddha?
More Yoga is a must
Once Cole’s homework was completed, I was ready for bed. I was ready to shut my bedroom door, read a book, and have a glass of wine. I was ready to sulk under my rain cloud. As tempting as this sounded, I couldn’t send Cole to bed feeling like a failure. He is as confused and as frustrated by his perfection as I am. Instead of sending him off to bed and hiding, we sat down together and read a chapter in our bedtime book, The Fire Within. We enjoyed a dozen pages of dragons and squirrel traps and crazy characters. We didn’t talk about his homework anymore. Instead we went about our nightly routine as we always have in our household. There is always a comfort in routine. I want him to know that he won’t be punished for striving for perfection. Had I sent him to bed and hid for the rest of the night, he would have carried guilt to bed with him. Instead of going to bed with dark clouds, I sent him to bed with blue skies.
This morning he woke up happy and ready to conquer Friday. Thank goodness there is no homework on Fridays!
I think I got a passing score on my pop-quiz. It certainly wasn’t a perfect score, but right now our household is striving for anything but perfect.
My biggest fear for my children - I want them to dream
Life is busy. Pre-pregnancy life was busy. Adding another baby to mix will inevitably make it more busy. On the flip side of that coin, life is pretty amazing. My life, our life, before the baby is my dream come true. Adding a baby to the mix makes me giddy. I’m already head over heels in love. This baby makes me love Christian, Cole and life even more than I thought possible. It’s a whole new chapter in life that I didn’t know existed.
If you know me or have been reading my blog for longer than a few days, you probably know a few things about me. I like to be organized. I’m slightly a control freak when it comes to life and planning. I live for balance. I strive for balance on a daily basis. Although my type-A personality is my dominate side, the side that makes me feel alive is the part of me that could sit amongst the trees for days on end. I can’t enjoy the simple things in life, the things that truly make me happy down to my toes, if I let my control freak planning self take over.
There are three stressers that somehow always surface in my life: money, my dislike of my job, and my messy house. My type-A personality thrives on these three things. I have spread sheets and to-do lists to keep it all in order. My hippy, nature loving side is suffocated by them. If I’m stressed out, I guarantee that one of those three things is the root of my problem.
Today was one of those days I felt the stress taking over. I began to focus less on the things that make me happy and more on the things that stress me out. The root of my stress: work. I’m not in love with my job. It’s not challenging. I’m not providing a service to anyone that enhances quality of life. I work with some lack-luster people. While my work schedule is normally very mild, the past few weeks it has been intense. I have so much going on. I should be in 3 places at the same time Monday through Friday. Add this to my busy home life, and I can start to feel overwhelmed. Bring on my type-A personality. I don’t like unfinished to-do lists. I don’t like having things hang over my head. I don’t like being the only person at work who seems to care about the quality of my performance. I care too much to not care. As I was driving around today checking on contractors (thinking of all the other places I needed to be at the same time), I made myself stop for 5 minutes. I was at the oceanfront. I could smell the salt air. I deserve 5 minutes in my day to take in the beauty of the ocean when it is less than 20 feet from me. I need those 5 minutes to keep my life in balance.
As I walked to the ocean, I could hear the waves. The breeze was refreshing. I love the smell of the salt-water. My skin felt alive. The skies in front of me were blue and beautiful. There wasn’t a soul on the beach. It was just me and the ocean. Ahhhh………….instant reminder of all that is good.
Northeast View
The entire time I was walking down to the beach I was looking to the northeast. As soon as I got to the end of the walk, I turned my head to the northwest. It was a completely different beach. The blue skies were nowhere to be seen. Black clouds were threatening the shore. Rain was on its way.
Southeast View
Life. Nature. I believe they are both mirror images of each other. Life mimics nature. The same life lessons we need to learn can be found in nature every day. If I walked down to beach facing the southeast, I would have thought it was going to be a yucky day. I would have stared straight into the rain clouds. I might not have ventured down the path to look at the ocean. Instead I saw the blue skies and a welcoming ocean. This was the lesson I need to be reminded of today.
Life is like my 2 minute walk to the beach. Dark clouds will always lingering. It is inevitable that it will rain. But blue skies and welcoming surf are always just a turn of the head away. I can sit and focus on the dark clouds in my life – money, work situations, and a messy house – or I can turn my head. I can focus on the positive. I can deal with the rain. I can accept that it might storm for a while. It might even storm longer than I’d like. Living in these moments aren’t so bad when I know that blue skies are in the direction I’m moving. If I keep walking with my face towards the sun (even when I can’t see it), I know I will feel its warmth when there are black clouds over my head.
These moments, in days like today, make my hippy heart happy! They keep my type-A personality in check. They keep me moving towards the sun. I’m so glad I took 5 minutes for myself today.
Kristy Maute 