Sleepy girls

 I had a little time free (even though my eyes are drooping like maybe I should be spending it napping…) so I thought I’d write a short catch-up. Here’s what my life looks like right now:

I work M/F with two 3 month old girls. They aren’t related- their moms actually met in the Peace Corp, and all 4 of the combined parents are teachers/administrators! I think it’s a totally awesome set-up they’ve got going on. They do a nanny share with me where they each pay me half of my ‘hourly rate’ so that they get considerable discounts on having a ‘nanny’ and their daughters get to socialize with peers too. It’s kind of perfect! I take pictures of them every day, so I’m sure they’ll pop up here from time to time. Shea is a mixture of European and Mexican heritages… and she has this gorgeous tan skin and hilarious rooster tail of hair that alwaaaaays sticks up. It never lays down even when wet, and the only way to really control it is gel! Lydia is very pale and almost a strawberry blonde (it’s hard to know because she’s still nearly bald!) and my marathon sleeper- she’ll take a cat nap or two and then one good 2-3 hour nap throughout the day! I have all these little nicknames- S’s parent’s initials are P and B so I call them PB&Shea, or I don’t need to use the monitor because I have good ‘Shea-dar". I’m a cornball, I know. They are great and we’re finding a good groove. Both moms had put the girls to nap their first am nap every day by going on a walk, so every morning we get to play a bit, then take a nice long walk. I push it anywhere from 30min-2 hours, depending on if they’re still happy and if I’m running/walking etc. (I’m RUNNING now, more on that later). Point being, built-in exercise there and they are awesome. 

Tues/Th I have school. I only have 2 classes this sem because I’m still on ‘probation’ so I’m in physiological psych and behavioral neuroscience. Both very labor intensive, memorization sort of classes. But I have to keep reminding myself that I REALLY find it interesting and that should make me feel lucky!

Weds I work for a fam I worked for all last year- in fact I started with them in the spring of 2009, when they only had one toddler, Z and were pregnant with their next kiddo. It doesn’t feel like it’s been nearly that long but it has- the baby turned 1 while I was in CA in July! I was there every week w the swaddling, colic, reflux etc issues he had as a newborn and now he’s a walking, babbling tank! It’s awesome, they’re great! I love their whole family so much… I spend so much time chatting with their mom it’s ridiculous! 

My weekends are free from formalized work but since I’ve been back from CA (around a month) they’ve been unusually full and don’t show signs of stopping! Last weekend I climbed my first 14er Saturday and spent Sunday with my family and doing laundry/hw etc. This coming weekend I have a BBQ tonight, the memory walk tomorrow at dawn, literally and Sunday evening I have the Soldier’s Angels concert…. get this- our venue Red Rocks Ampetheater is I guess pretty nationally recognized… a lot of bands have their live records recorded there, etc. Anyway, I just knew about it because I live here and I’ve actually never seen a concert there because they’re usually much more expensive than regular venues. Sunday night the Zac Brown Band (Chicken Fried, hahaha) is having some sort of benefit concert and the SA sent out an email needing volunteers. Now, I was about to remove myself completely from them because they do all sorts of things I really don’t like when other organizations do a much better job for their troops, but I got that email this am. Maybe I’ll change my views, who knows? I’m just excited! And Sunday am I’d made my dad promise to take me to the mtns (Because he works in a prison his days off are different than the usual, so his weekend is Sun/Mon) because the aspens are changing color! Also a nationally-known thing about CO… the "Colorado Gold" of the aspens for about a week or two before they drop all their leaves. I try to go every year and have had some awesome, life-changing memories and pictures during that special week. Last year it was mid-October but I went up to the mtns yesterday and it was already changing! Pictures once I’m home later on tonight. 

Regarding my new life as a healthy person:

This is what has changed, or what I do now- I work out an average of 30 minutes a day bare minimum. To me, this means that I could run on a treadmill for an hour today, and not do anything tomorrow and feel no guilt. In reality, I’m much more likely to work out an hour one day and still push for at least 30 min the next, but I removed that guilt from myself. My exercise right now looks like this: 

• M/F I walk/run w a stroller. No one ever warned anyone how hard it was to RUN pushing a mother effing stroller! It throws off my whole stride and I just really don’t appreciate it. Generally that means I’ll sprint to some object in the distance, walk a while, sprint etc. rather than chase the stroller like a madwoman. 
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• M/W/F I have an assortment of yoga DVDS I bring to work with me and do at least 1-2 times a week, if not more. The goal isn’t for the yoga to be my whole ‘workout’ or cardio or anything, it just makes me feel really great. Even if I feel like a total lard-ass whale that day, knowing I can do a whole set of yoga poses successfully makes me feel feminine and healthy and spiritual and relaxed. That’s the biggest benefit- even when I’m seething through clenched teeth because I feel the routine is too hard and I’m an inflexible cow… somehow I always come off the workout feeling like I drank 3 vodka sodas or took a 2 hour nap!
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• Weds the place I work has a really big treadmill with speakers right in front of my face. This is perfect because I have oddly shaped ear canals or some other deformity that makes it feel virtually impossible for me to keep earbuds in. Regardless, I plug in my iphone to the speakers and blast naughty gangster rap or impossible dance music and blast it, cover the time/mileage etc w a towel or shirt and just run my ass off at 4.5-6 mph while baby naps. I do a minimum of 30 minutes of that over the course of the whole day I’m there. What that looks like is- I could run 5mph for 10 minutes straight, walk it off for like 1 and go sit on my ass and watch Flipping Out on tivo till baby wakes up, and do that a few times over the day, or I could spend the whole 30-60 minutes doing it in once jaunt depending on my stamina
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I bring my lunch to work and am just a different person when it comes to eating. I’ll post on here sometime the screenshot I took of my bloodwork between September of last year and April of this one- every single thing dropped except my healthy cholesterol! I eat lean proteins and an inordinate amount of fruits and veggies. For whatever reason the past month I’ve eaten more fruit than ever in my life. No idea why, it just always looks SO good. Normally I’m a veggie girl. Spread out over a week I’ll eat 1-2 bell peppers, a bag of carrots, a head of cauliflower, a head of lettuce, a sweet potato or reg potato, a cucumber or 2, 5-10 bananas, 3-5 apples, and plums/pineapple/melon/pears/etc whenever they’re on sale. That’s just from lunches, mind you haha. I’m not even craving carbs anymore at all and generally don’t even want them. I eat an ungodly amount of beans now… and this is so funny… but my fave food the last 6 months is hands down canned Garbanzo beans! No kidding! I just eat em straight out of a can (rinsed) w a spoon if I allow myself!! I never knew this person existed within me! 

Oh… and the waterbottles. This might be getting out of hand: I have 6 Nalgene (the big jugs with the wide open top), 4 camelback flip-tops, 2 starbucks, and 4 other different brands of regularly used, BPA-free waterbottles. I’ll have to take a picture if I ever round them up together. I thought this was excessive and unnecessary until a few days ago when I recorded the water I drink. In a typical day when I’m at home or at work (which is always in a home as well, it’s a different story when I’m out and about) I’ll drink about 10-15 bottles of water minimum. The smallest bottles I use are 24 oz at the highest measurement line and have room for at least another ounce above that… so doing the math I average a bare minimum of 250 oz of just plain water every freaking day! I don’t know how many oz are in a gallon, but I do know that when I add that up it looks obscene! I mean, I know I pee a lot most days, but that’s just outrageous, and also why I do lol! Random sidenote- because my teeth are so cold-sensitive and I’m soooo German.. I only drink this water at room temperature. Not cold in the slightest and never any ice cubes. Just straight from the tap right in the middle of the faucet. 

I also picked up a coffee habit in CA. I like it really black , with 2 ice cubes so it doesn’t burn my mouth. That way I get my caffeine in without unnecessary calories, and I genuinely enjoy the taste! I also mix it up with a lot of green tea, but coffee is my staple. Something I learned about my body- I absolutely can NOT have any more caffeine than a small soda after noon or it completely disrupts my sleep! I never knew that before. I’ve been avoiding soda like the plague- my whole family drinks diet soda and I know way too much about brain biology to think that the calorie tradeoff doesn’t effect  or balance out the sweet cravings and the effects of all that artificial sweetener on function. Because I’ve only ever had diet sodas, regular ones taste like drinking honey to me and I just can’t do it… so I’ve been trying to avoid them altogether. Who IS this person? I feel like such a grown up fuddy duddy when I order plain iced tea with a lemon wedge at a restaurant…but that’s just because I don’t want to always seem cheap getting water! 

I’m trying to think of what else…. but I’m also feeling a cat nap while the girls sleep! This is entirely too long anyway! I will say that I haven’t been formally weighed since my Dr.s appt in April but I would say from pants sizes etc I’ve lost about…. 70-75 lbs total from my highest weight and am actively losing again instead of just maintaining. That feels amazing and weird and awesome to me, and I hope it just keeps getting better!