Best Idea I've ever Had

I have to brag a little. This is seriously genius mothering stuff. It's only taken me seven years to figure this particular trick out.

I've read all the parenting advice about how important it is to give your kids jobs/chores around the house. They learn responsibility, gain pride in their work, feel like an important part of the household day to day stuff. I know, this is nothing new. But did you know, it could make your life....easier?

Really! For the longest time I thought my kids were too young to truly help around the house. Yes, they are required to have a "clean" room if they want to play on the computer/wii/ipad etc. but I was never overwhelmed by their cleaning talent. So I figured if I really got them involved in the weekly cleaning process, I would end up cleaning up after THEM when it was all said and done. Boy, was I wrong!

With a little bit of instruction and very specific small jobs (not "clean the bathroom" more like, "wipe down the sinks"), my two oldest and I got done a weeks worth of house cleaning in ONE morning. Seriously. And it was...fun? I know, that sounds crazy. But they felt accomplished and proud, made some extra cash (fifty cents per job), and I got to focus on the more adult tasks, like emptying the dishwasher and so forth. The baby followed us around with a dust cloth and felt like she was an integral part of the process, too.

So what did we get accomplished? Jackson, the love of my life, did my very least favorite jobs. He vacummed ALL of the stairs in the house (two sets!) and scrubbed. the. toilets. I love him. He also vacummed the basement, helped pick up the baby's room, and dusted the first floor.

Look how he replaced the pictures after dusting! "They're in order by age now, mom."



Macy, my sweet girl, was so diligent. She watered my plants, wiped down the chairs, wiped down the baseboards, and cleaned the bathroom sinks. My favorite was how she arranged the sinks after she wiped them down.

So orderly and symmetrical!


So now, my friends, it's off to the pool!

Whew.

First open water swim of the season: done. Almost didn't do it, though. Patrick and I took the kids to the lake near our house last evening. I bought the kids new pails and shovels to keep them happy in the sand while pDowney and I took turns swimming the 500 meters swim course. I forgot how cute it is to watch a toddler discover walking on sand for the first time. Ellis had fun getting messy but was slightly stressed out by the terrain.

So it was decided that I would go first. I waded into the water. It wasn't too cold, so that was a plus. Immediately, I was overwhelmed by the greenery. I stood for another ten minutes thinking about it, and then turned around and walked out. At that moment in time, I was done with triathlons forever and ever. F this. I told Patrick to go first, hiding tears behind my goggles. He shrugged and mumbled something about how it's probably better once you get further out. I told him he had no idea, secretly hoping he would get tangled in an especially long branch and would have to thrash his way free.

He swam for quite a bit, while I chatted with my mini cheering section. My son put it in perspective for me when he pointed out that the plants couldn't hurt me because they don't have mouths (like the fish, for instance). My middle daughter's face is what convinced me to try again, though. I ask her multiple times a day to do things that she is obviously anxious about (taste vegetables, flush the toilet, talk to her teachers, etc.). How is it fair for me to give up on something when I push her so hard?

So, I swallowed my fear (and pretended I had just taken a swallow of Jack Daniels), and tried again. I was still super anxious for about the first 100 meters, swimmming half of it with my head above water, but once I calmed my breath down, I actually felt....good. I was angry at myself for wasting time during the first 100 meters with my head out of the water.

There were even moments in the lake that I, dare I say it, enjoyed myself. The sun was low in the sky, so ever time my head turned to the west, I could see the light filter through the green water. It shined like my favorite shade of green, and was kind of calming.

Technorati Tags: .

There's a Flock of Butterflies in my Gut

It's early Monday morning. I am t-minus 12 days and counting until Tinman.

I have NOT been in a lake yet. My anxiety level is so high that I'm slightly dizzy. Kill Creek Lake opens tonight for open water swim, so Patrick and I are going to try and take turns swimming the course there. I feel physically stronger than ever, but it's my brain that's going to get me.

It's interesting because I've yet to find a swimmer with the exact fear as me. One of my friends was unsettled by the crowd of people in the water at the start. Another good friend new to the triathlon business was surprised by the waves in her face the first time she swam outdoors. Me, I just have an irrational fear of underwater plant life. Sigh.

This is a picture of Hubs and I making out on the beach. As you can see, Hubs just got off work from his job as a police officer slash candy striper. The seaweed monster has arrived to exact it's revenge on all newbie triathletes.



Speaking of SuperHubs, he has already managed to qualify and earn a free entry into a national race in Iowa this year. It's a pretty sweet way to start the season after a year off.

On the home front, my goal is to take the kiddos to do something fun once a week this summer. This is besides swimming, of course. Last week we spent the afternoon at the zoo. I was a little nervous about the walking. This is the first summer I've only brought a single stroller. Macy tended to get tired and whiny last year and still needed a place to sit halfway through most trips. She did super well this year and we all had fabulous time. I'm almost considering a zoo pass for the summer because this trip went so well. This week? Powell gardens.

I'm also challenging myself in the kitchen this month. My trusty meal planning site, e-Mealz, has added a new menu option. Clean Eating! Which means more vegetables and even less kid-friendly ingredients. So far it's not a total bust. I'm really enjoying the recipes, and the rest of the family is enjoying about fifty percent of what I make. The nice thing about e-mealz, is that I'm free to switch back to my original plan (low fat family plan), after a month, free of charge. If you haven't checked out e-mealz yet, I suggest you take a peek. The simplicity of it is what drew me in.

Well, I'm off to complete my grocery shopping for the week, all three kids in tow. I'm seriously considering waking up while it's still dark out to complete my shopping before Patrick leaves for work. The loss of sleep would almost be worth the saved sanity.

What Is Working for Me Right Now...

Like I said before, life is good. I'm feeling successful in several aspects of my life right now. I have come to realize that when I'm just starting to feel good about something, another part of my life likes to rock the boat. So I am fully prepared for some kind of crazy upheaval. But in the meantime, I'm enjoying the smoothness of things.

I've managed to take control of my weight better than I ever have in my life. Losing weight is something that has NEVER come easy to me. I can't complain too much, because I've never struggled with large amounts of weight, but like 90% of women out there, I've wished for a weight loss of some kind, at some time in my life.

I am the type of person who doesn't lose any weight when they tell you you're going to. Breastfeeding? Not a chance. My body held onto that baby weight like it was gold. Training for various endurance races? Nope. I think I gained weight during my first half marathon training plan. Eating vegetarian for an entire year and a half? Absolutely not. I was never the waify hippy vegetarian that I imagined I was going to be. And then there was the few months of my life where I did all of these things at once. Post-Macy, I trained for a half marathon, breast fed an 8 month old, and gave up meat products. My fat cells laughed at me.

Fast forward to now. I've discovered a couple of things that are seriously and consistently working for me. The biggest one? Myfitnesspal.com. I'm pretty sure most dieting people have discovered this site by now. I've tried weight watchers before, and the premise behind MFP is similar, but free. You track your calories in and calories out, simple enough. The benefit is all the little extras. You can link up with your friends, similar to facebook, for some extra accountability. My favorite part is when you complete a day, the program prompts you with a message of "if every day were like today, in five weeks you would weigh..." This seems so simple, but to me, is highly motivating.

Second thing that is helping? Shakeology shakes. My good friend Hillary introduced me to them. I've researched a lot of shakes and their ingredients, on a quest to find a shake with the most real components. Well, shakeology is that shake, my friends. I do not look at it as a weight loss shake, but as an easy, healthy meal replacement. It has HELPED with my weight loss tremendously because it gives me a consistent energy boost in the morning for a minimum amount of calories. I often get a good hour to hour and a half workout done off of one of these shakes for breakfast. The downside of these shakes? Their cost. It apparently costs a lot to turn real nutrients into a fine powder and then give them a chocolate flavor. It is definitely worth the cost, now that I've seen the results. But the 120 bucks a month was a hard thing to get over in the beginning.

So come find me on myfitnesspal (josieO1979) and we can motivate each other. We'll all be feeling sexy in our swimming suits in no time.

Still Here!

Life is good, folks.  Busy and good.  Patrick and I are in full training mode, and besides feeding and entertaining small children, have time for little else. But I think we are both thriving on the chaos right now, and actually really enjoying life. 

My first "race" of the season was the Warrior Dash.  It. Was. Awesome.  I put race in quotations because I did not look at it as competitively as I should have.  My good friend and super fit badass, Ryanne, did the race with me, and she pushed my lazy butt through two thirds of the race.  I was thinking "fun run" while she was thinking "military qualification test."  The dash was alot harder and muddier than I was expecting, but that's why I loved it in the end.  I had a super huge feeling of accomplishment when it was over.   

We look good even AFTER 49 minutes of mud, swimming, climbing, jumping,

running, fire leaping, and dead fish.

I was cleaning mud out of my ears for a week.

My shoes were white and purple at the beginning of the race.

Best part:  Turkey leg, free beer, and live music at the end.  Note to anyone interested in this next year: not an especially child friendly environment.  As much as I wanted my kids to see me jumping over the fire pit, they would of been hot and bored all day.

Next up on the agenda:  Tinman.  I have been working out hard to do well at this race.  It is a hometown classic and my husband always has very good results at this race, so I feel a lot of pressure to not tarnish the family legacy.  I certainly don't expect to place, but I would like to improve on my personal best (from the one other triathlon I've ever done in my life).  My secret weapon?

My beautiful, sweet Kinvaras.  I love them.  I have knocked four minutes off of my 5k, probably mostly because I love to run in these shoes so much.  They look fast, which is super important (seriously, ask my neon shoe loving Hubs).  Secondly they have thinner soles which have allowed me to feel how I push off.  I can focus on pushing off with my toes instead of shuffling with my whole foot.  It was like a revelation when I felt the difference.

I'm also spending hours on the bike trainer.  Not so much because I am THAT dedicated, but really because I've found a new favorite show on Netflix that I look forward to catching up on during nap time.  The United States of Tara.  I love that show so much right now.  I was expecting something a little raunchier since it was on Showtime, but really it is not too bad.  Tara, an Overland Park housewife, and her dysfunctional but lovable family, are learning to deal with her multiple personality disorder now that she has decided to go off her meds.  Strangely enough, I totally relate to Tara and her family, except for the personality disorder. 

I highly recommend the show for it's characters and plot lines, but the references to the Kansas City area are a super bonus.

On the home front, I have stuck with the dinner plan for a whole year and a half now, and I have to say, I am seeing serious improvement.  Four nights a week, I make a real dinner and expect each child to at least taste it.  If someone refuses even a taste (usually Macy) then they spend the remainder of the evening in their room. Macy usually comes down after a half hour or so and chokes down a minuscule bite of whatever so she can rejoin the family for the night.  Her palate definitely has room for improvement.  Jackson Henry, on the other hand, has expanded his tastes by leaps and bounds.  He even comments on how mature he is getting because he eats "grown-up" healthy food.  There are some dinners where he eats a fair amount of everything on his plate (meat, veggies, etc.).  He is still highly motivated by dessert, but the boy can stand a few extra calories, so I'm okay with it. He even wrote in his Mother's Day card that he loves his mom because she makes him healthy dinners!  His growth is what gives me patience through Macy's anti-food phase, because he too used to refuse everything.  All I can say is sticking to your guns works, sometimes it just takes over 500 days of trying.  I am thankful I never gave up. 

Tired of Germs

I am constantly surrounded by germs, in my personal and professional life.  I have come to terms with this.  I am a mother to three small germ carriers and I take care of sick children whom sometimes have infections that stump the infectious disease department of my hospital.  My philosophy on germ control is something along the lines of "exposure increases immunity."  My house is far from antiseptic.  But over the last three weeks, I have been forced to reconsider my stance.

It all started with a nagging cold that plagued my husband and I for a couple of weeks.  We both still managed to work out as much as we wanted, and maintained our daily routines without a problem. 

Fast forward a couple of weeks.  All of a sudden my cough turns into something that I can't deal with anymore.  I couldn't sing my kids to sleep because speaking for too long would send me into a fit.  I started getting chills and my cough became deep and unproductive.  I knew this was turning into something bad, so I drug myself into the local Urgent Care for a prescription.  This is when Patrick realized how bad I felt.  I NEVER take myself to the doctor.  I usually think I know what's wrong with myself and how to fix it.  I stay away from antibiotics as much as possible and rely on good old Ibuprofen to get me through a rough spot. 

The Urgent Care doc gave me a pneumonia diagnosis and put me on steroids, cough suppressant, and a "new" antibiotic, Factive.  I waited a day to fill these prescriptions and almost landed myself in the hospital due to my delay.  I took my middle girl to gymnastics and totally sapped the little reserve I had left.  I was delirious on the way home, my fever had spiked to 104, and I was having coughing fits that were leaving me dizzy.  I really shouldn't of been driving.

Anyway, I was slowly improving as the meds got into my system.  I maintained my work schedule, albeit with a deep rattle of a cough, but I felt like I was at least not infectious after five days of antibiotics. 

Then, on day seven of the antibiotics, this happened:

And this picture was taken in the early stages.  I was covered in an itchy red ugly rash.  Every single inch of my skin looked inflamed.  I was afraid to go into public because of how infectious I looked.  I hated wearing clothes because of how sensitive my skin was.  I was MISERABLE. 

Meanwhile, my three small children were all spiking fevers at different intervals.  Jackson had it the worst, missing two days of school and half of his spring break due to fevers over 101 degrees.  They were all diagnosed with the flu, so Hubs was smart and put himself of Tamiflu before he succumbed.  We subsisted on pizza and juice for several days because it was easy and it was the only thing any of us felt like eating.  I actually called my husband home from work early because I physically couldn't care for my family.  That was a low point for me.

And now here we are.  The kids all seem better, and this is good.  Patrick is healthy, thank goodness.  I, however, am still having issues.  The rash has faded and the itching is gone.  The cough is better.  But for the last four days, I have battled a monster sinus type headache.  I am not a person that gets headaches, so my tolerance is very low.  I want to pull my face off every evening around 6:00pm, for this is when the headaches peak.  Ibuprofen hardly touches them.  I have invested in congestion and allergy medicine, I have used and reused the neti pot, all to no avail.  I am scared that I will again have to go to the doctor for a sinus infection and be put on ANTIBIOTICS.  I do not want to go.  I will suffer as long as possible.

Netflix is AWESOME

Why does it take me so long to catch onto trendy stuff? I don't know, but now that I've found Netflix, I will never let go.

Triathlon training is in full effect around this house. The weather is mostly nice, and the hubs and I are taking advantage. I've found a training plan I am super stoked about from Trigeek.com, and it starts officially next Monday. In the meantime, I am working at building my swimming and running base. Building my running base at this time consists of 45 minute treadmill runs during nap time. PAINFUL. Treadmills are torture. I often just count as high as I can in my head as the miles tick by, sometimes reaching the tens of thousands. Seriously.

Until Netflix. Now, I count down the minutes until nap time. Right now, I am catching up on the first few seasons of Glee, next I am moving onto the "Downtown Abbey" show everyone is talking about. I set up my trusty iPad on the treadmill shelf, turn on the captions so I don't miss a plot line, and just run and run.

Swimming is heaven. I wish I could get everyone I know in the pool. The world would be a happier place. I am slightly nervous about getting back into a lake, but in the meantime, I am enjoying the clean, clear, chlorineness of the lap lanes.

I am also quite excited about the growing number of my friends at work that have signed up for their first triathlons. I am so excited about sharing this journey with more and more people.