Real Mom Confessions

I am back linking up with Girl with Blog for her Real Mom Confessions.
I LOVE this series and while I have fallen silent in the last few months - I faithfully looked forward to it and gave thanks for the mom's who posted each week. Summer for me at work, even with the best preparation and planning, is beautiful chaos and I am in survival mode moving from one thing to the next and I am never home, traveling from mission trip to mission trip to Thursday service days, to covering for my colleague while he is on much deserved vacation to who knows what - while it is all wonderfulness it makes life even crazier than normal.

1. This week I FINALLY have begin to get a grasp on cleaning our house and getting caught up on the laundry - we had been functioning in as needed basis at best meaning: some days while up feeding the one year old in the middle of the night I would throw in an overfull load of laundry {washing everything on cold so it could all go in together} that would get us through the next few days and ignoring the mountain ranges of dirty clothes that had magically appeared.
2. I have learned the joy of the bribe with my beloved one year old. I happily throw her in her crib with the ipad playing a Mickey Mouse Club House episode so I can savor my shower and not have a little face screaming and peeking in the shower - sometimes this momma just needs fifteen minutes to shower, get dressed, and breathe a little.
3. Last night for dinner we had cereal. Marc, Lucy, and I all had different types because we were out of any big bags of cereal and down to the bottom of the bags and it was the good semi stale stuff that had been sitting in the cupboard for only God knows how long. My husband offered to stop at the grocery store on the way home from work today if I assembled a list.
4. Lucy is working on getting two teeth - they will be the death of me. Seriously- note the picture above - she has the two middle bottom teeth and the one is coming in next to it and then the top middle right one is also working on making it's appearance - this sweet face goes from pure joy to angry at the world in mach speed and these two teeth {or at least that's what I am blaming it on} has taken my horrible sleep to a whole new level of crappy sleeping - which leads me to #5
5. I keep trying to get back in shape while balancing sleepless nights and the chaos of life. I finally this past week decided to let it go - embrace the late night sanity chocolate chip cookies and know some day my little will be big, sleeping through the night, and I will have the sanity to worry about eating well, working out regularly, and being back in shape. I am doing what I can and taking that for what it is - I refuse to stress out over this any longer. I am rejoicing in the cold weather, embracing my sweatpants and dealing with it.

Any confessions for you this week?

Can you relate to any of this?

Zumba

My knees only allow me to run about four days a week most weeks before they start to revolt. We have come to an agreement that if I cross train on the other days and don't run they will behave (try to not swell up too much AND we can get some good runs in on the days we agree to). Now generally my knees are kind and follow by this agreement and so I try to reciprocate. I have gotten creative with my cross training - in the winter I did a ton of swimming and recently (as you have probably read about several times) I got a new bike.

I am loving biking and I do still enjoy a good swim however, last weekend at synod assembly a friend of mine introduced me to Zumba. I had tried it once or twice before but nothing really, I had tried it in a huge group of ladies who all knew one another and apparently were professional dancers, or so it felt like to me (the one who had no clue what she was doing and felt like she was just flailing around in the room and looked ridiculous). My friend brought his laptop and a Zumba DVD and one night as we were all hanging out he said he was off to do Zumba, between our snickers I was intrigued. I wanted to try it. I wanted to try it outside of a ridiculously large group of people who all knew the routines like the back of their hands.

So another friend and I joined him, we tried it. AND I LIKED IT, seriously when I wasn't under the pressure of all the other people in the room and I didn't feel like someone was criticizing my inability to dance  we had a great time, worked up a serious sweat, and laughed at ourselves during many of the moves.

My friend gave me a zumba DVD before we left as a gift! I was jazzed. I have already done the DVD a couple times at my house and LOVE it! What a fun and new cross-training option.


What types of workout DVDs do you enjoy? (I do love all of Jillian's workout DVDs)
Have you tried Zumba? At home or in a gym?
What do you think of it?

New bike

I FINALLY DID IT! I got my new bike. Here are some pictures from last night's ride. It is a Trek road bike, she is a serious improvement from my bike circa 8th grade, semi cracked from the ridiculous old lady who hit me last year.

Marc & I
He is actually a serious bike rider and knows what he is doing
I am just learning the ropes

My view of my bike

The snow is FINALLY melting away

I love that we rode our bikes out to the middle of no where and were running into gravel roads

It was a wonderful ride, I need to learn how to ride with my feet clipped into my pedals, it should be fine once I get the hang of it, I am still a little slow getting in and out of them but I am catching on. My butt was a little sore after last night's ride - I actually think we only went 15 or so miles but it is a different set of muscles than I am accustom to using. I am excited about it and am up early so I can ride my bike to work today.


Do you enjoy biking?
Do you cross train in any way?
What is your favorite non running workout?