Week 21

I ended up at 166. I was pretty steady all week, even though I missed a few workouts and ate way too much Saturday and Sunday. But most importantly, the dress totally fit! And looked awesome. (Sidenote: I had forgotten exactly how amazing an underwire bra can be.) Onto my third official week of half-marathon training and things are still feeling great.

M: 167 skip
T: 167, 1.5 mile run at 13:41
W: 167, 2x10 at 10lbs
T: 167, walk
F: 166, 2x10 at 10lbs
S: 167, 3.5 mile run, 36:21
S: 166, skip

Week 20

I ended up at 167, but I saw 165 in the middle of the week. It's so much easier to eat healthy food when the weather is nice. Half marathon training begins now! This really just means running three days a week instead of two and trying to do my weights more regularly. Twenty four weeks to go!

M: strength 1.5x10 at 10lbs
T: 1.5 mile run 15:34
W: skip
T: 1.5 mile run 15:25
F: strength 1.5x10 at 10 lbs
S: 30 min walk
S: 3 mile run 33:55 without stroller (minus at least one minute for being stuck at stoplights)

An Open Letter to Urban Dog Owners

Dear Urban Dog Owners, 


I am writing today to urge you to take a second to read the signage in the Chicago Park District Children's Playlots. You will notice that it says "No dogs allowed." That sign applies to the whole area of playground equipment inside the fence to which said sign is attached. There are acres of green grass surrounding the woodchipped playlots for your dog to run around in. 


In the spirit of full disclosure, I am not a dog owner. But I have been a regular dog sitter and therefore understand the needs of dogs. I respect their desire to run free and chase things and frolic about. Go ahead and let your dog off leash in the park. Play fetch or frisbee. Or just sit in the shade. As long as you pick up after your dog, I don't really care what you do in the park. 


I do care about you allowing your dog to run free in a fenced in playlot specifically designated for small children. If your dog is not well trained enough to run free in the park, then it is certainly not well trained enough to run free around little kids. If your dog is too dumb to not run into oncoming traffic, then your dog is also too dumb to not run into a toddler playing in the sand. 


I understand that a public park is not going to be the cleanest place for children to play in just by nature of it being a public space. But your allowing your dog to urinate and defecate on playground equipment is simply criminal. Kids scramble all over these things and it disgusts me to think about my child crawling through your animal's excrement. 


If you are in the playlot with your child as well as your pet, please leave your dog outside of the fence. There are several nice shady spots along the fence that you can tie your dog to while keeping an eye on it. Some parks even have little puppy drinking fountains so your dog can stay well hydrated. Take advantage of these amenities and it will be safer for everyone. 


So urban dog owners, I hope you take this seriously. The public parks are one of the many great features of Chicago and I hope we can all enjoy them together, kids and dogs alike. 


Sincerely, 


Elizabeth


P.S. To the lady who puts her toy poodle in the baby swing and pushes it: Shame on you. There is no reason for that whatsoever. 

Bad Habits

Lily's motor skills have just about tripled over the last week. She is now fully crawling (up on all fours), pulling herself up to stand every three seconds, testing letting go with one and sometimes both hands, learning about falling down, taking itty bitty baby steps if you hold her hands, and clapping. She was a hoot at Wiggleworms on Friday. She kept trying to climb up the other babies.

Along with all this movement, I feel like her gaze is more intense. Every single thing I do is seen by these tiny little brown eyes. And I know she's taking it all in and understanding a lot of what's going on around her. This has made me kind of self-conscious. Particularly of my bad habits. Here she is intensely studying the camera as it takes her picture.

I have several, but the one I'm most worried about right now is crossing the street against the light. I strongly believe that if you are an adult, you are capable of judging when it is safe to cross the street regardless of what the stupid little man/hand says. If you mess up, well it's just natural selection. This is absolutely not the case for kids. I have seen more children almost be hit by cars than I can count.

Since I've been walking/running with the stroller, I'm more likely to wait for the light because it takes longer to get across the street. But when there are no cars for blocks in any direction I still feel the pull of jaywalking. I just can't help it. Now that she's watching me more intensely I'm trying even harder to wait. It feels like such a waste of time. I know she won't be crossing any streets for a long while yet, but it might just take me that long to stop doing it.  What do they say, it takes 21 days to form/break a habit? We'll see if I can make it that long.

Week 19

Ended up at 169, but I was much lower throughout the week. The weekend was kind of long and filled with good food so I ended up breaking even.

M: strength 1x10 at 10lbs, Jim Karas weight routine from "Cardio Free Diet" (not following the rest of the book, just stealing the weight routine.)
T: 1.5 mile run 15:07
W: getting rid of the cake
Th: strength
F: 1.5 mile run 14:33
S: volunteering is hard work!
S: rest

We're in trouble now...

House Proud?

This is a phrase from Nate Berkus, a guy with a daytime decorating show on NBC that is on sometimes when Lily takes a nap on my lap. This is also a phrase that doesn't particularly apply to my life right now. 

I was so excited when we got an unfurnished apartment in Chicago. Before, in Tucson, we rented a fully furnished house. The same was true for when I was living by myself in grad school. And previous to that I was living in a dorm room (which always looked fabulous thanks to Kate's good taste and Leo's carpentry skills). So I was really looking forward to starting with a blank slate and buying real grown-up furniture, not just a mish-mashed collection. I had wild dreams of nice furniture, pretty fabrics, lush area rugs, and hanging things on the walls.

Then reality set in. Furniture is expensive. And we have a baby that produces a greater amount and variety of slime than I could have imagined. And we can't really put nails in the walls. So off to IKEA we went. And we raided both of our parents homes for extra shelves, dressers, tables, etc. It all sort of fits together in an eclectic, unplanned kind of way and I'm ok with it. 

I'm less ok with the baby stuff that is everywhere. As I look around the living room there is a giant blue rubber cow, stuffed toy mushroom, and bathtub turtle scattered across the floor; one stroller in the front hall and another in the front closet with the door that won't shut because of said stroller; and a pair of tiny socks on the coffee table. We have bins and baskets to throw things into, and it's usually pretty neat, but right from the moment you walk in our apartment says there's a baby here. 

That in and of itself is not a bad thing. I love Lily and she certainly doesn't have an excess of stuff. I just don't want it to be THE defining feature of our home. We're still our own people, a young twenty-something couple, and we happen to have a baby. Sadly, our current living situation doesn't really allow for anything else. We just don't have the room to designate baby and non-baby areas. Actually, as I write this I don't believe there should be any non-baby areas, just non baby-stuff areas. Still, an impossibility for the present.  But, it is what it is. Someday we will have a house with a place for Lily and all her paraphernalia along with some more grown-up spaces.   

We have a baby, but we also still have interests and ideas outside of baby-dom. Just take a peek at our bookshelves. Our lives are too full to contain in just our little place. That's why we have our garden plot, spend countless hours in parks and on trails, are members at museums, frequent the local library, and are regulars at the neighborhood restaurants. Chicago is our home, not just what fits in our walls.

So for now, if you come over for dinner and the couch squeaks when you sit down because Lily stuffed a toy under the cushion, just ignore it. Then ask me what I think about the Anthropocene.  

Week 18

Ended up at 169, but I was holding steady at less than that all week until the weekend. I bought a new pair of running shoes on Saturday and was embarrassed to tell the stare clerk how long ago I bought the ones I was wearing. And my feet are apparently a whole size bigger.

M: yoga
T: 1 mile run @ 9:06, 1 hr walk
W: 3 mile walk + 20 min "toning" video (real glad I didn't pay money/waste a library trip on it)
Th: rest
F: 1 mile run under 11 min, 1 hr walk
S: strength
S: 2 mile run 20:35

96 Square Feet of Happiness

We got a plot in the 62nd Street Community Garden! We've been on the waiting list since October. I'm sooooo excited. It's really an amazing place. When the garden was started last year they added 18 inches of really good top soil and compost over the whole garden, so the whole thing is one giant raised bed. There are wood chipped paths between the plots, and there are tools, water, and wheelbarrows for everyone to use. I love it. 

Our plot is on the southwest corner of the garden, right when you walk in. That means we're the most likely plot to get hit by wildlife, garden thieves, and getting trampled, but that's ok. We'll put up a little wire fence to help keep people out. Being on the corner is a good thing because it gets great sun, has great drainage, and there's a ton of space around it for me to put Lily on the ground while I work. The person who had the plot before us must have had a small forest of cherry tomato plants because there were a ton of them still there. They were dead and woody, but I still had to pull them all out. And the weeds were starting to take ground. 

Here's a before picture of our plot. It's 8 feet wide and 12 feet long. 

And after pulling all the random things out, turning the soil with a pitchfork, and raking it smooth. Note Lily down at the very end for scale. 

My little garden gnome. She kept trying to eat the wood chips. 

Today it's supposed to rain, so tomorrow I'll go put some seeds in. I also have a lavender plant and 2 strawberry plants to put in. This year is going to be a total experiment. My plan is to basically throw some seeds in patches and see what grows. We'll add some tomato plants and peppers once it gets a little warmer. 

I love having a place to go outside with a purpose. I certainly enjoy going to parks and on walks/jogs along the lake, but it's really nice to be able to work on something outside. I spent one summer working on the organic farm at Dartmouth and fell in love with growing food. If Joe had chosen a more rural law school, I would have tried to get a job working on a small farm, no joke. Recently I have been feeling like I really wanted to get "settled" (read: buy a house, not that we could do that right now). A large part of that was just wanting to have a place to grow things. This garden meets that need, and I find myself now not staring longingly at every for sale sign I see. 

So horray for our garden! Expect lots of updates as things progress. I just hope the weather decides to stay warm.

Domesticity

Today is my 27th birthday and I've been thinking a lot about the person I've become. It's taken more than nine months, but I've settled a bit into this whole mom thing. I didn't realize how different it was going to be. 


I've done the housewife thing before. I was between jobs the summer before I got pregnant, and I loved it. I enjoy keeping the house clean, cooking delicious and healthy food, and having a million hobbies (gardening, knitting, art and music, and now cake decorating). I would spend all day working on random things around the house. I never ran out of things to do. So when it came to being a stay-at-home mom I thought I would be a natural, and love it. 


Turns out when you have a newborn, that's all you do. I found it frustrating to be home all the time, but not be able to actually do anything productive. But all that's changing now. Lily is content to scoot around on the floor while I do something else nearby. It has been incredibly freeing. Most of the time the apartment is in decent condition, and I can really cook again. Also, now we have a garden plot (there will be a whole post dedicated to this soon) so I can go work in the garden while Lily naps in the stroller or plays on a blanket nearby. 


Over the past months I've been toying with the idea of going back to work. I keep checking Craigslist for part-time positions, and I've even applied a few places (without any luck, somehow I'm over- and under-qualified for most things). I really felt like I needed to be doing something worthwhile. To help feel like my own person again, I started volunteering at the Museum of Science and Industry. I go a couple times a month for about 4 hours at a time on Saturdays and it's great. Joe and Lily have a daddy-daughter date, and I get to be out of the house doing something fun and baby-free for a while. 


And now I'm content. I love having the time to exercise and garden and nap when I want to. I enjoy the responsibilities of "keeping house" and parenting. I appreciate having some time outside of the home to do my own thing. I'm thankful for two sets of grandparents nearby so Joe and I can get out once in a while. And I absolutely adore the breakfasts, evenings and weekends when we're all together as our own little family. Here's to 27 years of change, learning, mistakes, moving, and growing.

Week 17

Ha! I did it! 168 this morning! And it's not just a anomaly. I'm pumped. Only 4 more weeks until the wedding I need to fit into the dress for, and I'm hopeful it will happen. Way to go for not eating like a competitive eater this week. And I have to say, I'm surprised at how great my hips have been feeling since starting running more regularly. Usually by now I'm getting pretty severe pain. Maybe it's our new good mattress? Maybe all the relaxin in my body from being pregnant allowed my hips to settle where they should be and all my hip woes are over? One can only hope.

M: 3x10 @ 7.5 lbs core and upper
T: Lower
W: 40 min run with 1x100 ladder
Th: 1 hr yoga video
F: rest
S: 1.5 hr hike with Lily in the baby backpack
S: easy 3 mile jog. 33:38