Rocket Ship

I don’t know why I do this to myself sometimes. When things seem like they could be a good idea, and then it turns into a whole obsession on the part of my daughter.

She loves to swim. I feel like as soon as the weather is warm enough to justify going to the pool regularly, we’re swimming at least 4 days a week. Pretty much any day she doesn’t have school, we’re at the pool or at the beach. But as her swimming skills grow stronger, she much prefers the pool because she knows she can swim to her little heart’s content (or until it’s time to get ready for a nap).

The rec pool where we live is absolutely gorgeous, and we are so blessed to have such an amazing space to swim in so I don’t mind taking her to the pool and watching her dive for her dive sticks. I also don’t mind it because it completely wears her out and I’m pretty much guaranteed a nap. I’m also guaranteed she’ll eat a huge lunch because swimming creates this unreal kind of hunger.

For whatever reason, on this particular pool day, I wasn’t able to get my workout done in the morning and I just needed to move. I totally had that itch where I needed to workout and I knew that day it wasn’t going to happen.

So we’re swimming around, I think we were playing Mermaids (which is of course a made up name with rules that change at my daughter’s whim), and I decided ‘hey I’m going to do the same thruster Dada does with her but in the water, that’ll be a good workout.’ Because launching an almost 40 pound wiggly kid in the air seemed like a good core, arm and leg workout at the time.

I convinced Grace to stand on my thighs, told her she was a rocket ship, counted down from 5 and launched her in the air. There began the game of Rocket Ship. But of course my no fear, water loving little fish became absolutely obsessed with Mama launching her into the air and landing in the water.

I think that day alone I did around 100 Rocket Ships and every part of my body was sore. Dada of course had a good laugh that I got finagled into the water version of the Gracie Thruster and laughed even harder when he figured out that it was my idea. Really I should’ve known what I was getting myself into.

Especially now because every time we go to the pool, I know Rocket Ship is going to happen. It doesn’t matter if Dada is there with us and can throw her higher in the air, it doesn’t matter if the water is freezing and I have ZERO desire to swim, or if it’s super crowded and we really don’t have space for the toddler to fly. Rocket Ship is happening. At least 50 times and now that Grace is an expert counter, she’ll also catch me on discrepancies with MY counting (why isn’t it reasonable to skip from 20 to 30?).

I will say though it’s one of the most effective workouts I’ve ever had and I know after, both she and I will have an amazing nap! 

The Power of Water

Sometimes I have to actively remind myself that parenting is a season. With each season comes its’ challenges as well as its huge successes. Right now…well…we’re in a season to say the least and it’s not a season I’ve been particularly enjoying most of the time (if I’m being honest).

The meltdowns are epic, the mood swings can throw me for a loop quite frankly but on the other side of that, the language development, the awareness of what’s going on around her has dramatically shifted (for the positive) as well.

School plays a huge role for this with my kiddo and school lately has been exhausting because school lately has taken a turn for the more demanding. In a good way. She can handle it. She’s bright and she’s funny and she’s determined. I’m astounded everyday with the things she’s learning because I felt like I didn’t have those things mastered when I was her age.

So I feel like when you sit back and reflect on the bigger picture, the extremes can be justified because of the amount of growth going on in her brain and in her little body (which I swear is almost as big as mine). Like on some subconscious level, it has to be exhausting to be learning everything she’s learning and growing as quickly as she seems to be growing.

School definitely pushes her in all of these regards and she comes home absolutely wiped. When she’s wiped, tears are usually the go to answer for everything that doesn’t go her way, no matter how big or small. Luckily she’s getting to the point where she can recognize and verbalize that she’s tired and that’s why she’s overreacting. Again, leading to my amazement because she’s 3. That’s amazing to me for a 3 year old.

Anyways, the one thing I know with her that will always calm her down is water. I don’t know if it’s because I swam so much when I was pregnant that she knows water in the recesses of her brain to be a calm place or if it’s just in her given nature. Regardless, school days mean bath days right after school because it gives her time to get out some wiggles and to wind down.

Our thing has always been to test the water by my holding her up high and then slowly dipping her toes into the bath water. Like a squat while you’re holding a wiggly weight to your chest. Except the weight is almost as long as you are tall and wants to be lifted wayyyy above your head.

Initially this was a good idea. Initially she was only like 25 pounds so really it wasn’t that much to hold up that high for that long. But now…holy moly…I went to hold her up the other day and had to brace myself against the side of the tub because she’s topping 40 pounds. Add in the water and I swear she’s over 40.

It just makes me laugh. Because life could be harder, things could be worse and really if the heaviest part of my day is holding her, then life truly is good. And then I laugh a little more because I wonder how I’m going to hold her up when she’s like 60 pounds and taller than me. But us mamas always figure out that kind of stuff right?

I'm Finally There

I guess this is the final part to my health journey, the talk about how the rest of my body and soul was after I had Grace. If I’m being honest, it was horrible. I was SO fortunate that I didn’t get post partum depression (and God bless any one who is reading this who is currently going through that struggle, I send you ALL of my love), I was fortunate to lose all of the baby weight REALLY quickly, but I felt like absolute ick.

 All the new mom stuff aside, I mean truly becoming a Mama is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done and I learned how to walk again as an adult. People say you’re going to be tired, but you can’t even conceptualize what that means (well I could from this one time I stayed awake for 3 days on an ROTC exercise but that’s a story for another time), the adjustments your body goes through, shoot the adjustments your family goes through, and that’s just scratching the surface. One thing is a lot for one person to handle, not to mention all at once, and all the while you’ve also been deemed responsible for keeping this tiny human alive. Ay yai yai.

I had all those adjustments and then I had this weird thing happen with my digestion, it completely changed. Like drastically and in the worst way ever, changed. I got IBS symptoms without having IBS, and it was miserable. I couldn’t understand why my body was having such a severe reaction to everything I put in it, and I tried everything under the sun to change it. I also tried really hard to accept the “new look” for my body because the symptoms were so severe (and yes I did seek medical attention because of it), I was amazingly inflamed through my core and even though scale wise I lost the weight, it didn’t look like I had lost the weight.

I worked out like crazy as my means to cope, and my means to get whatever excess weight I had off, I had my healthy lifestyle with my healthy eating habits and nothing was working. I was so frustrated, I was so discouraged, and because of those symptoms and being a new mama, I was also exhausted. Quite honestly, because my symptoms were IBS mimicking (I was actually initially diagnosed with IBS, the symptoms were so parallel), I was also embarrassed.

 Finally I confided in a girlfriend of mine who takes a more holistic approach on life and she started talking to me about the power of detoxing. I definitely had a reason to, the medications alone from the c-section were reason to detox, so I thought sure why not. Really at that point I figured I had nothing to lose and I just wanted to feel better. I needed it, I was suffering.

3 days after having that superfood in my body only once a day and I felt like myself again. Symptoms gone, digestion back to normal, I didn’t feel tired when I first woke up in the morning, and I was sleeping better at night. 3 months later and people were noticing and asking me to help them get what I had so they could also feel better. Because they were noticing I felt energetic, they were noticing that I was losing weight (which actually turned out to be inflammation), and they were noticing a change in my overall affect.

1 year later and I was teaching people how to safely intermittent fast and fasting with my husband who’s also seen amazing results and feels his best. I get to see my tribe take their health journey to a whole new level because they’re truly giving their body the best nutrition, and I get to celebrate their victories.

And now? I’m growing. I’m teaching people how to incorporate fitness into their nutrition, giving details on how a woman’s body responds differently to fitness, and I’m in a place of maintenance. I’m smaller than I was when I was a sophomore in college (and you better believe I did a happy dance when I put on a pair of jeans that was a size down from where I was when I was 21), I get sick less than I ever have, and I get to give my body the best nutrition everyday.

I’m teaching people how to be accountable to themselves, because I was accountable to MYSELF. I’m teaching people not just how to reach their goals, but also that they deserve to reach those goals. I’m showing people, just like I showed myself, that we MATTER and that we won’t be able to give our best selves to those around us unless we give it to ourselves first.

Getting MY Healthy Back

Because motherhood is a journey and not a destination and because even though I had this HUGE blessing of knowledge and education with fitness and nutrition, it doesn’t mean that things were easy.

So to piggy back on my last post, I truly am grateful that Grace is being raised in an environment where healthy living is a priority and she can learn about what it means to make healthy choices without feeling pressured to do it.

I distinctly remember the first Pilates session I did post c-section with Grace. I went in by myself because I honestly wasn’t sure how any of it was going to feel. On the positive, my normally conservative doctor cleared me for all activities 4 weeks post partum as well as post op, so I went into the studio in between classes when I knew I wouldn’t run into anyone. I had already been back in the pool and was walking, but Pilates…geesh that was a WHOLE other story.

Here I am on the reformer trying to figure out what I was even going to do because it was at least 3 months since I programmed a class much less worked out on a reformer, and I’m going through the motions and then I go to do a roll up…and my body literally said ABSOLUTELY NOT. And I remember thinking holy moly I’m gonna have to get a new job because I can’t even do this one and this is so horrible because I just want to be able to do this and I can’t, well…you get the picture, there was for sure a moment of panic. There was no patience on my part that I was so soon in the studio after having a baby as well as having major abdominal surgery and there was for sure no humility when it came to my body and what I thought were its capabilities.

So I took a deep breath, let go of my frustration and slowly, with time, the things I was used to doing came back. For the most part, although I will say that the majority of exercises feel different especially where the core is concerned and I did have a significant amount of re-learning to do.

And then I held myself to the fire with Pilates. I made sure I was going to class, I was practicing at home, in the effort to get my strength back up. Not just because I only make people do what I have done myself (and recently), but also because I needed my confidence back to I could effectively teach class. For me, it’s a matter of holding my tribe to the fire because I hold myself to the fire. I don’t expect that anyone will be able to do everything on any given day, that’s why you take your necessary modifications, BUT I do expect that people will show up every time and will do THEIR best every time. Not what the person is doing next to them, but what their body can do for them. I want to teach people to let go of their ego so they can have a true appreciation for their own body’s capabilities and be able to celebrate those capabilities, knowing that it’s only going to get better. I want people to show up for themselves and when they do those things that amaze themselves, I want to be the coach in the corner telling them “See, I knew you could do it.”