My goals and also a bit about halfway through whole 30

Half way into the whole 30, and I am just glad to be feeling happy about what's going into my body. If whole 30's goal is to lose weight, that's a bad goal. The way to loose weight is to have a calorie deficit, and no where in the whole 30 literature does it talk about counting calories. Basically, many people do lose weight because they are simply eating less calories based on the fact that veggies have way less calories than fast food options. But I think if you were already eating fairly clean, whole 30 won't really change that much. The main way I'm going to see the weight loss I wish I could achieve is if I start working out more. But that is so hard with my limitations. I did take a fitness pilates class this week and OMG I love it. I knew I would from the fact that I did it every week, twice a week, for months after G was born (until we moved). I really had missed it, and hated the fact that I'm no where near in pilates shape like I used to be. I mean. You guys. I used to take advanced reformer classes. It was no joke. But.... here I am. Two kids later. A torn up abdomen later. and busy mom life later....

Back to whole 30. So I was feeling super negative about my body at the end of last year. And just within the first week of whole 30 I was back down to the weight and body image I was before the holidays hit. So that's the best news out of the whole thing. And my kids are way less sugar dependent (honey counts as sugar, and seeing as how I no longer "have" to put it into their oatmeal...that's a win!) G also eats scrambled eggs without cheese in them, so also big win (they eat cheese other times of the day). I just wish they would eat unsweetened Greek yogurt...but tried that and failed (ended up having to squeeze in some honey before they'd finish their cups). Mostly they still eat ketchup with meat. I don't plan on fighting that battle yet, because I'll take some not-terrible ketchup over not-eating-meat any day.

My hubby hasn't had any alcohol in 16 days and that's a super awesome win (me too, but I wasn't a drink every night person like he was). We have not had late night unhealthy snacks (we had developed a 3-4 times a week chips and salsa habit) in 16 days and we have not had dark chocolate or anything sweet (aside from sweet potatoes or fruit) for that matter.

What a pride point!

But. I really want to start caring about pride so much less. I need to stop focusing on external. I always say out loud that I don't care...but I do. So I confessed it and we are moving on.

I feel like I've got this paleo thing on wrap, but I don't think after the whole 30 that I will keep it up AS strict. There will be wine sometimes and there will be weekly chocolate. I've said it before and I'll repeat, if I am happy with what goes in. I am happy with what is (size/shape/etc).

Now I need to focus on the things that matter. (body image does matter to me, though, because if I'm too hung up on my body I get anxiety and it leaves me strung out in every other area of life)

So. Thank you whole 30 for clearing my mind of the food and body woes. Here are my next goals.

1. Stop yelling at my kids. Sometimes I do better than others. I even went through a period of time where I was on a no yelling streak after I felt so guilty about yelling at G when she was 2.5. But then J's behavior got pretty bad and things escalated. I certainly wouldn't yell at my kids in front of Jesus....yet I do every day, since He lives in their souls. I must remember this and I must act on this. I ordered a book on amazon. I can't believe I paid 16 bucks for it. Thankfully I had a gift card balance. But anyways, it's called Yell Less, Love More. and I am hoping it's life changing. I bawled my eyes out last night after putting the kids to bed. Yesterday was the kind of day where I wished I had a job. And that's stupid because I know I WANT to raise them. I was just not a great mom yesterday. I guess we all have those days.
My yelling stems from resentment, impatience, perfectionism, and the fact that my son is SUPER defiant if he doesn't have 100% of your attention.
I don't need to yell at G. I guess I did enough of that for her when she was 2. So that's how I justify yelling at J...is that if I do it now, I won't have to in a year.....but that's a terrible excuse and I don't care what I did for G. I want to be better. I know I am a good mom and I know I show them crazy amounts of love. But I also know that yelling is damaging and does not set the Christ's love example I want to set.
I will surely always discipline my kids, but it is proven that fear is not an effective parenting tool. I thought it was. But it's not. I know this if I look back on my own childhood. Fear worked, but only until I figured out a way to undermine the fear. So the only way I got back on the right path was through self regulation that I learned NOT from the yelling part of my parents, but from the actual guidance part.

2. Stop living on my phone. I mean. I could be worse, but man I could be so much better. Deleting facebook was a huge step in the right direction. Next? instagram. I have to keep twitter for work, but I hate that platform, so it's not a time suck for me. The next step in operation not live on phone....email. But for work it is so so helpful to have on my phone....need to find a balance. Wish we could afford for me to quit that job. Then I'd really have no reason to be on my phone and I could even get a dumb phone again.... but we can't afford that so. Blah.

3. Stick to our budget. I take full responsibility for the fact that we have a good income but have to live so frugally and so budget conscious. I have more student loans (bills for that went up this month, we are paying almost as much on student loans as we do for our house, moral of that story, don't get student loans) and yet I don't work. Well. Not really any ways. I keep telling myself though, if we had more money to 'play' with, we'd have to donate more....because we aren't called to live lucratively as Christians. So maybe God knew that it would be harder for us to get to Heaven if we had more money....so here we sit. Nervously waiting for the other foot to drop that would land us in a terrible financial position. I hope that foot never lands. I have to stop being a martyr to organic food. But that's so hard knowing it's better for us. I can't unknow this fact. I get so conflicted finding a balance between feeding us healthy and better food versus having no money to do that. Life is so ironic. and cruel.

4. Trim the fat. In my life, that is. Certain acquaintances, groups, and positions have to be trimmed in order for me to be a better friend to those that I truly need and want in my life. So, I'm making the hard call on things to quit and say no to. Life is cruel again. Time is a big shortage in my life and I don't get enough sleep.

so, there you have it. pure and raw.

love to all.

Our First Marathon!

We recently ran the Garmin Marathon in the Land of Oz -- yes, we ran 26.2 miles!! Okay, we probably walked about half a mile of that, but still, that's a small percentage!

I have always said, and still maintain, that running that many miles is absolutely crazy. After we finished our half marathon last fall, we basically looked at each other and said, "We can totally do a full!"
So we signed up for one.
Then the training was pretty terrible. Training for your first marathon over the winter is challenging because you end up running long distances on a treadmill or outside in the freezing weather and then something ends up pulled, torn, etc...There were also illnesses to contend with, and not to mention our two kiddos. So needless to say we did not stick to our training plan very well. We did manage to get one 20 mile run in, and it didn't go too terrible.
Despite both having tweeked ankles and my husband falling down the stairs two days before our race, we went ahead with the run and beat our goal pace by 3 minutes!! (Originally I had wanted to run the race under 4:30, but from about week 4 on we knew that wasn't going to happen. We changed our goal to 5 hours. Then when we picked up our packets, we saw there was a 4:50 pacer, so that became our goal)

Here's a run down of how the race went for me (My husband said he hurt basically the whole time and in my opinion is seemed the worst part was the beginning for him - just speaking from how it came off);

Mile 1; Excitement, but then I saw a sweet girl with a "go mommy!" sign that made me think of how proud she must be of her mom and how hard that mom must of worked, and then it made me think of how hard I've worked and how I'm trying to be a good example for my kids.... which made me actually a bit emotional inside and I couldn't believe I felt a tear in my eye!

Mile 2; settling in, going smoothly, that last mile was SLOW! But we wanted to start slow because it sets up a better last half if you don't go out to fast. Hubby needed to stop and stretch, his ankle was hurting.

Mile 3; rain drops sprinkling down, sky looks very bad....greaaaattttttt
When we split from the half marathon there was a guy directing runners and he said, "to the right, hurts a little, to the left, hurts a lot" I LOL'd and said, "true true!"

Mile 4; a bit of a break in rain, my husband needed a porta potty stop, lost our pacer

Mile 5; picked up speed to catch our pacer, rain was pouring at this point. I was pretty mad about it

Mile 6; sprinkles, hills, puddles, grumpy at the weather but chugging along physically

Mile 7; TORRENTIAL DOWN POUR, thunder, lightening....yeah this is DUMB and INSANE but by God we're doing it

Mile 8; GU stop! I grabbed a chocolate flavor and cared only minutely that GU isn't clean...it was SPECTACULAR. The consistency is perfect and it tasted awesome. Definitely needed that pick me up during the miserable storm

Mile 9; decided that at least the storm is propelling us on, because who wants to WALK in the rain?? Get done sooner, get out of the rain sooner, just keep running! But we did heed the warnings to not let the rain make us run "too" fast, so we kept our pace right between the pacers.

Mile 10; Just as I asked my husband if he thought we had another hour or so in the rain...the sky cleared a tiny bit and the rain stopped! It was a miracle, haha. The wind was still around and so trees were still spitting water and the ground was disgusting, but my posture improved so much since now I was able to run standing up.

Mile 11; we are doing this! We were in a groove at this point. Walked up a short steep hill and didn't feel bad at all

Mile 12; we made it through the part of the course I was most worried about--the first 12 with the most hills and the rain had stopped, I was happy for sure! My husband was hurting pretty bad though. Walked through an aid station, stretched.

Mile 13; Feeling pretty cheery through the first half. Our time was right around 2:25 which was almost 20 minutes slower than our half marathon race time, but again, that was the plan, slow and steady to finish.

Mile 14; Neither of us are feeling to great. Since the rain had stopped, we had nothing to distract us from our hurting bodies.

Mile 15; walked some on the bridge, my smart husband brought a sample pack of biofreeze to rub on his ankle and he let me have some for my super aching knees -- I was SO surprised at the difference it made. Instantaneously my knees were rejuvenated. This was totally what we needed.

Mile 16; at the park and split for the trail.

Miles 17-19; Sticking pretty close with our pacer, watching those who had already made the turn run past us was a great distraction. We chatted some through the next few miles. Walked up a few steep inclines...stopped and stretched once

Miles 20-21; heading back to and through the park, stopped to stretch a bit, not feeling awesome, belly hurting but at 21.5 we saw the kids and my sister and soon to be brother in law! it was so great to see them!! I gave G a huge hug and sweet J got a kiss. They waved and it was perfect timing.

Miles 22-23; this was my "wall" but thankfully my husband was there to help me get through it. I didn't stop...obviously, and even at one point my hubby asked if I wanted to walk and I barked out a "no!" because I knew I wouldn't start back again

hurting!!

Mile 24; when we hit this point, I knew we'd finish and I had worked through the mental exhaustion of the previous few miles. My husband even said he was "excited" at this point, which propelled me even more because he's not an excitable person! We walked through the last aid station ready to smash the finish.

Mile 25; holy s$%* we are DOING THIS! We were passing people left and right at this point. This was our fastest mile. I think that speaks volumes to our training and our racing mentality. You can't start out too crazy, there has to be something left in the tank to finish strong...and we did that. I looked at a lot of the times on the results and we were some of the only people who had slower pace times at 13.1 and 18.5 miles than we did over all...because our back 8 was faster than our first 18 miles.... pretty proud of our finish

booking it buddy!

Mile 26; this course has an incline to get to the finish, and I knew that because I had run the route, and I had prepared us for that....we rocked it (painfully, but still).  My husband was a bit behind me, I slowed a tiny bit for him to catch me because I wanted to finish together

Mile 26.2; We both ran to the finish, what felt like a sprint was probably not, but we were going faster than the whole race and people were cheering...and the MC was shouting out encouraging things and said how impressed he was with our neck and neck finish. My husband ended up edging me out by 6 thousandths of a second! I'm totally proud of him, but he was apologizing because he "beat me." I don't see it like that though :-)

just finished...ya it was rough but so proud!

So there you have it! When I sit here and think about it, I can't believe we really did it!

times;

forgot to stop my watch until about a minute after we finished

Things to Remember

I want to remember...

That G currently uses "It's dark...!" in a whiny voice as a way to get me to stay in her room for a bit before nap/night time. We chat about our day, and I sing her a song, and finally have to get up and leave despite her protests. She doesn't seem legitimately scared, plus she has a night light and at nap time it's definitely NOT dark. I think it's kind of sweet...though once it goes past 5 minutes, I'm like, "ok, good night."

blurry photo pic of her adorbs church outfit

That G's little voice is the sweetest. She says awesome fun things. "It's lost! We have to find it!" "Ohhh so brrriiigghht!" "Oh no! It's broken. Let's fix it!" "Tanks!" (thanks) "Luhew" (Love you) "Dipping Sticks!!!" (an occasional treat for keeping her bed dry) 

That we've been playing a lot of Dora Match Game. She's pretty amazing at it, especially for a 2 year old, but even just in general. It's teaching her a lot about rules, taking turns, and polishing her spectacular memory skills. I love listening to her say "Mommy's turn!" "daddy's turn!" "My turn!" She has also started using pronouns appropriately...though some still get messed up. The other night she said, "Come play Dora game with us!" This was said to me, in relation to the fact that my husband had set it up in the living room.

.....I mean. Having a 2 year old is super fun. Both my husband and I comment on how she just makes us so happy. Then there's the fits she's taken to throwing. I'm doing a fairly good job of staying level headed. I keep saying, sometimes even out loud, she's just two. She's just two. I sure do wish I could zap her frontal lobe and make it mature. Ha. Then again, there are times I lose my cool more than I'd like. It gets exhausting being with her 24/7...but again, I love it.

helping with the cups.

Oh....then that baby.... I could literally eat him up. He is so dang sweet and snuggly. I've been doing great with him. 

That J smells so amazing after a bath. I don't remember focusing on little things like that with G. I think it was because I was so busy learning to be a mom. And now that I am a mom, J is the baby I get to 'enjoy' a bit more. I guess that sounds bad, but it's the truth.

That he loves books, though he'd rather eat them I think. He loves gnawing on anything. Those dang teeth have to be around here somewhere.

"sit/standing in his go-pod"

That he is doing so amazing. That dang mutated gene will not drag him down. I found out last week that I am, in fact, a carrier. So he "got" CDPX1 from me. No biggie. I expected that....though I did choke back tears when I heard the official news. It's still a punch to the gut. One I assumed was coming, but that still doesn't take away the initial hurt. So...we are done having kids, in our opinion. We will leave it slightly up to God, as in, nothing drastic will be done, but there will not be any intentional procreating for us again. Kinda bummed/kinda glad. Okay, truth time, Actually really glad. We feel complete.

right after I got the genetic counselor call

That J adores G. I mean, that kid loves watching her, slobbering all over her. 

That I FINALLY have legitimate success with NOT nursing to sleep. I tried, pretty hard, with G to teach her to not nurse to sleep. I never really got anywhere, until she weaned. I didn't wanted to follow that same path with J...but it happened... Until this weekend. Since Saturday, J has pretty much been put into his crib wide awake, and fallen asleep on his own. MAGNIFICENT. It's helped him sleep {a tad bit} better at night too.

I also want to remember that date nights are vital to our marriage. We had one a two Fridays ago and I'm still thinking about how wonderful it was. Praised be to God for responsible baby sitters and family too.

in other news. I'm one full week into training for a half-marathon. I got about half way into training for one back in 09, but hurt my self so bad I had to shell out over a thousand bucks for an MRI, and was in PT for months... Here's to hoping that doesn't happen again. Week one was easy, and I'm pumped for... October.... What?! I have 20 weeks left. That's half a friggin' pregnancy. Ugh. At least I have PLENTY of time to increase my mileage. I've got a great training plan from Runner's World that's customized for me.

Next up, I plan to officially type out J's birth story for his half birthday. 

why this is blurry...idk. but its them hanging out in my bed

getting so BIG

sibling love

at the park

date night

Chariot and this momma are back

Thanks to my amazing friend, I finally have a cougar 2--a chariot double stroller. She found it at a consignment sale and even though its an 04 model... I've been looking on Craigslist and eBay for the right one and never found the right fit...she really came through!
It's like buying a used car...makes more sense to buy used when we don't have the money to pay 900 for a jogging stroller plus bike cart. They hold their value, and while a new model would have been lovely to have, a used chariot is still better than the fanciest BOB. The suspension on these things is amazing and it rolls so nice while jogging. It is the Aston Martin of strollers. Just go to chariotcarriers.com to see what I am talking about.
J has an infant sling attachment that turns the chariot into a cozy bouncy seat and G loves having him in there with her.
I had a great first jog with it, probably ran about 10-15 min out of 30. Felt really awesome to get back into it. I know in no time I'll be up to 5k's.
Man I missed running
XOXO