Birthday Dinner Celebrating 32!
Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. It’s been three months since my last post.
To be honest, I am forcing myself to write this post. Seriously. It took me an hour to write the first 129 words of this post. That’s pretty good considering it has taken me six months to get to the point that I am at now.
Today is my 32nd birthday. While my 31st year was just as awesome as my 30th year, it was also the year that I stopped taking care of me and really lost touch with myself. I think I made a few blog posts (or at least, I had the intentions of doing so), declaring that I was back and would be posting more, but it never came to fruition. That’s a shame because I had a lot to say last year. I just never made myself say it.
Last year was awesome in terms of new-motherhood. Zachary Louis rocks. He is just the coolest kid ever. I love being his mommy and I don’t mind how much it has changed my livestyle. That said, I need to find a better balance. Before Zach was born, I worked out six days a week for anywhere between 1-2.5 hours a day. During my maternity leave, we went for walks several days a week, and it allowed me to get some of my mojo back. I didn’t get to exercise much after I went back to work other than weekends and some Pure Barre during lunch time. A few things contributed to my newfound laziness:
1. Breastfeeding. I was one of the lucky ones. I was always hungry, yet lost so much weight while nursing/pumping that it got to the point where my clothes were falling off of me and I thought that I looked like Skeletor (look at pictures of me from Christmas 2014). As a result, I thought that I didn’t really need to do much physical activity. It was my free pass! I did not feel as though I had a free pass to do whatever I wanted while pregnant. It was quite the opposite: I felt such a pressure to maintain my workouts and eat healthy. Breastfeeding was that “letting loose” that I never had! This was great until I started weening right after Zach’s first birthday on June 13. By the time we had gone to Comic-Con in July, my body had quickly adjusted to our new nursing schedule, and by the time that I weened completely at the start of September, I gained a lot of weight really quickly. Despite my constant declarations of, “I need to go to bed earlier, eat healthier, and exercise more” I have not really done any of those things. I am now a full 10lbs heavier than I was before I got pregnant, and it really bums me out. Pants that used to fit me just fine before I got pregnant (the same ones that hung off of me while I was nursing) are now so tight that I have to jump into some of them to pull them up! It’s been a real wake-up call that it is time to pull myself together.
2. I got comforable with the notion of, “All new parents are messes.” My house is an absoluste fucking mess at all times and I am barely put together most days. This was acceptable for the first four months of Zach’s birth, and maybe I’d get an extension during all of his ear infections when he was awake all night until he was seven months old, but now that he goes through periods where he sleeps through the night, there is no excuse for my behavior. I have lots of time to clean at night. I can work out after Zach goes to bed. I can get up early to work out or look decent. Yet…I don’t do any of those things.
So these are some of the things that add up to me not taking good care of myself. I also actively choose to surf the internet or watch Hulu instead of blogging nowadays, something that I would not have done in the past. I found that I have a permanent wrinkle now. My skin looks awful. My hair perpectually makes me look like a homeless person who does not shower. My clothes do not fit. There have actually been nights where I have laid awake in bed thinking about blog posts that I could write the next morning. Yet, I have never actually written one of these imaged blogs.
For Christmas, “Zachary” got me a book similar to the “642 Things to Write About” book. That writing challenge really did me wonders, and I hope that this book will do the same. I should have started it on Jan. 1, but <shocking!!!!!> I was lazy and didn’t do a post. So now, I am going to vow a few thing about my 32nd year. First: I commit to write at least 3 blog posts per week. The second is that I will try to follow this new writing challenge (300 Writing Prompts) every week until I turn 33. I’m only getting older; I have nothing to lose.
The second change I am making is getting back to exercising. Like I said above, I have gained 10lbs since before I got pregnant. Actually, I think that the last time I weighed what I do now, I was 28 weeks pregnant (exaggerating). I really don’t look or feel like myself. I have subscribed to Beachbody and have some Pure Barre packages in the works. I vow to get myself and my body back. With that, comes my mind…
Finally, I need to take better care of myself. Quite honestly, I am starting to look old. I have never careda bout this before, ever. How can I fix this? To start, Jay and I are going to give up drinking for Lent (Valentines’ Day dinner being the “cheat” day exception, haha). I think this will help me lose weight and go to bed earlier. I tend to drink more while watching TV or net-surfing. If I eliminate one of the factors that keeps me up, I think it will help, and I think the weight loss results will be good. Life might be a bit boring, but… 😉 (jk jk jk jk).
I feel like 32 is the age that has hit me the most. I’m a grown-up now, for real. I have to really keep us healthy, close, and on a good budget so we can expand our family and buy a large house some day. It’s time to grow up. I don’t want to embarrass my son today by being one of those people who are in denial about their age or looks. I just want to be a good mom. To do that, I need to reclaim me. It’s time to get back to feeling more like myself again. Here we go!
