Don't Worry Mama, I Know Those Are Bad Words

We live on music in my house. We always have music playing, in the house, in the car, it doesn’t matter. I mean it makes sense because I learned how to write and read music when I was a kid, my parents always played music for us (I have awesome memories of listening to Fleetwood Mac as a kid, still love them) and encourage my brother and I to have pretty eclectic taste when it came to our jams.

Needless to say Grace has been exposed to all kinds of music from the time she was an infant. Different decades, different genres, everything we listen to, she listens to as well. Of course this means major jam out time when we’re in the car, because otherwise car rides are boring and horrible. I mean I’m just saying, a car ride with some good tunes is life for us. I’m sure you understand.

So whoops when I realized too late that the playlist rocking out in my car one day was Mommy’s playlist with the explicit language and not the censored child playlist. Bigger whoops when the song that came on was a hip hop song that Mommy loves (and Grace does too but up until this point she had only heard the censored version) with ALL the language. Like ALL of the language. Of course I realized this way too late and when I went to change the song, not that it mattered but it’s the thought that counts, Grace BEGGED me to keep the song on.

Ok so the song stays on. But so begins the conversation about bad language which pretty much was the 4 year old explanation of how there’s bad words that you don’t say out loud, but when it’s in a song you can sing along with the song in your head. Silently. I think at one point I even told her that there were words in the song that she would NEVER hear Mommy (or anyone else in her life for that matter) say out loud.

Conversation over, song over, here I am thinking maybe I dodged the proverbial bullet. Ironically, I was even thinking wow she let that go way faster than I thought she would have.

I was wrong. Of course I was wrong. So the next time we get into the car, the music comes on and Grace tells me, “Mommy, can we listen to the song with the bad language so I can sing along to it in my head?”. Whoops.

Her Magic Wand is Broken

What a tragedy right? So is the fact that my kid is totally NOT napping when she should be as I write this blog. Ugh, this phase of transitioning out of naps has totally NOT been our golden moment because she so desperately still needs to sleep and just won’t, there’s just too much going on inside that brain of hers to let her rest. But that’s another story for another time.

This one is about my kid and her magic wand. Which actually is appropriate for her not napping because it has me reflecting on how much really things have changed since I became a Mommy. We went from her wake up being at 4:30a everyday (yes I’m serious, I thought I was going to die from exhaustion) and her first nap being in the stroller during Sully’s walk, to her having only one nap a day and walks consisting of a park trip to wear her out.

Now walks are just something she tolerates. Because it’s exercise for the puppies, she knows she has to stay in the stroller so I know it’s not the most exciting way for her to spend her time. But in reality life could be worse, so walking we go. Granted I do try to make it as fun as I can with running commentary about the trees, all the things I see, that sort of thing.

But we also are collectors of sticks on our walks. For some reason the trees around where we live give the BEST sticks in the whole world. The costume designers from Harry Potter literally could’ve used these sticks as wands in the movies, they’re that good.

Naturally the kiddo calls them her wands and regularly does magic spells while we’re walking. Because why not? It keeps her entertained and quite frankly watching her imagination go wild is also super entertaining for me.

So one morning we’re enjoying our walk and she’s super excited because Mommy found a particularly AMAZING stick, and she’s saying “magical wand, magical wand, turn me into a Princess.” She’s also turning the dogs into various creatures and the trees into other things, basically she’s having a ball and living her best life.

Then she turns to me and says “magical wand, magical wand, turn Mommy into a Princess” and I promptly remind her that Mommy is the Queen, not a princess and she says “oh yes Your Majesty” (did I mention my kid calls me Your Majesty? She came up with that one on her own and I’m not fighting it).

She looks at me again, takes up her wand and says “magical wand, magical wand, turn Mommy into a Queen” and then starts banging the wand on the side of the stroller and yelling “WHY AREN’T YOU WORKING WAND??”.

I had to stop walking I was laughing so hard. Her comedic timing is ON FIRE and the best part is that she doesn’t even realize that she’s being funny.

The Mulan Superhero Princess

The Gracie Thruster

This story isn’t as much about me as it is about my husband and my daughter. Those two are peas in a pod. People don’t believe but as much as my girl might look like me, she acts just like her Dada and she loves him fiercely. I love that. I love that she seeks him out, and that he’ll wrestle and tickle her. Just like her Dada, my child has ZERO fear and loves anything that causes her little heart to beat a little faster. So when there’s no roller coaster nearby, these two often make up their own death defying games.

It’s a completely normal thing in my house to hear Gracie squealing after being tossed in the air or while being chased during a game of tag. It’s also normal as a result, to hear the dogs barking after both of them, mostly because Daisy is constantly concerned about Grace’s safety (I think Daisy thinks she is Grace’s mommy).

Apparently one night, these two got the bright idea that they needed a new game to play. As I’m making dinner, I hear the happy squealing of my kiddo in the backyard and I didn’t even look up, because that’s so normal. I’m smiling, making dinner, happy that everyone is happy, and at some point I glance up to see Gracie flying in the air above my husband’s head. Like arms out, legs out, flying and thinking it was the best thing in the world.

Hence the Gracie Thruster. You know what a thruster is? It’s a functional movement back from my CrossFit days, where at its essence you’re moving a weight from the ground to above your head. Obviously this is typically done with a barbell or sometimes even free weights, but not with a child, much less my child.

But as I was watching my husband launch the kiddo into the air, it literally looked like she was the weighted aspect of the thruster. He was completing the squat through the shoulder press (with amazing form I might add) and adding in a toss at the top almost like a wall ball (another CrossFit movement where you toss a weighted ball to the same spot on a wall multiple times).

The whole time, all I could think was “well she’s not a small child so he’s working his booty off, but he said he didn’t get a workout in today, so this will totally count.” Sure enough, Gracie made him do this newly formed functional movement 100 times. I’m not kidding. Grace thought they discovered a new game, and my husband was absolutely worked from it.

Grace calls it the Hi-Ya, and every chance she gets, she asks for it, usually in increments of 10.  Now my husband uses it as a chance to get in a little extra workout, because why not multi-task if you have the chance?

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.”