Momma's a Slacker

Ok, so you don't need me to tell you, but I'm a total slacker!! Truth be told, since I'm not working, I only know it's Sunday because we go to church, but all the other days run together. And even when I know it's Sunday, Mandi Monday still slips my mind until my loving husband wakes up Monday morning and jokingly says, "what did you do Mandi Monday about," knowing full well I spaced it. Anyway...enough with the excuses...here I am.

Things are going well. I had my 6 week postpartum check up today (can you believe it's been 6 weeks already? Where does the time go?) I got a gold star (not actually, although that would be kind of fun and motivating for a type A like myself). I got the go ahead to resume activities as normal...but as I've mentioned, I gave myself the go ahead weeks ago. I'm back running again. I took it a little easy, wanting to wait into I got the official clearance before going full throttle. So I was only running 2 times a week and walking the other days. I did manage to get my mileage up to 3.5 miles though....so hopefully I can just build on that quickly. All in all I feel great. I could go for slightly more sleep, but truthfully I get a lot, just not all in a row. And mornings are always fun because Mckenna is adorable in the morning, grunting, groaning, stretching, etc. So it makes a bad night's sleep feel so worth it.

Mckenna is doing great. Growing like a beast. She's up around 9.5 lbs these days and adding more and more rolls to her collection. I love them!! Why can't rolls be so desirable on EVERYONE? Mckenna's big update this week is that she's officially smiling, a lot and on purpose!! She started occasionally doing it about 10 days ago, but now she definitely smiles intentionally. It melts my heart! We sit for what feels like hours with HUGE smiles on our faces because we can't get enough (and you still have to work at it a bit). By the time you get a smile you feel a bit like a clown who's face is going to fall off...but it's sooo worth it. You can see her gummy grin in the picture above. We're still working to get a good photo...but this is the best one yet.

That's all I have for now. Off to Carters to buy a few pairs of pants for her. No, I'm not joking...it's a sick addiction ;-) I kid. We haven't bought THAT many clothes, she just "needs" some pants.

First Day Back in the Saddle

As many of you know, you're supposed to take some time to recover after having a baby. Makes total sense, you shoot a cannon ball through the eye of a needle, your body probably wants to take some time to heal. Generally they tell you to wait 6 weeks to really get back into your normal routines. However, 6 weeks seemed a little long to me. My discharge instructions were to not lift anything heavier than my baby...really?! They think someone can't and won't lift something heavier than 6lbs for 6 weeks?! That would mean I couldn't even lift a full gallon of milk on my own - a little silly if you ask me.

Anywhooo, I decided to just go by how my body was feeling, and slowly ease back into my normal exercise routine. Last week I started walking farther distances (2-2.5 miles) to see how my body did with that. I felt great and didn't have any increased bleeding (Sorry if you're eating lunch!! That's just one key thing they say to watch for to know if you're over-exerting yourself). Since I was able to walk farther and do more last week with no issues, I decided to try to run starting today. I'll be honest, I wasn't really looking forward to it when I woke up this morning. I was excited to get back into my normal groove, and this was the first step, but I wasn't exactly giddy about strapping on my running shoes. But today was the day that I had committed to in my mind, so today was the day I was going to do it.

I was nervous. Why? No clue. Maybe because I wanted so badly for it to be easy and comfortable, but I was a afraid I'd feel like Frankenstein, awkwardly making my way down the sidewalk. I decided to suck up the anxious feeling (what else can you do with an unjustified emotion, right?!) and hit the road. The first few steps felt just like I anticipated, awkward but exciting. I felt great. "I'm doing it...I'm doing it and I'm a rockstar!" I thought to myself the first 30 seconds. "People are wimps for waiting 6 weeks." I thought to myself as I hit the one minute mark. "Gosh. I stayed in better shape than I thought." I pat myself on the back as I made it another 30 seconds. "Ouch, what's that?!" I was quickly humbled 2 minutes in. "Yikes, that's a serious side cramp," my growing head began to shrink. "OOO yowzers, that doesn't feel awesome," I thought as my left knee let me know it wasn't excited about running. "OH" "EH" "OWWIE" I thought to myself as I Frankensteined down the sidewalk.

Never-the-less 2 miles and 20 minutes later the torture was over. I was back in my house, forgetting the discomfort of the first time back at it. "Ok, that wasn't so bad." I thought to myself as the discomforts from the run had already faded away....faded away just as quickly as they came; quickly enough to make me think, "Welp, at least tomorrow will be better."

Moral of the story? Running pretty much sucks for everyone who's out of shape! But I can assure you, there's no day as bad as the first day. So if you're out of shape and starting to run again...join me in my new anthem: tomorrow will be better!