Traveling and Love

hotel...even though I would rather be over packed than forget something. With a baby that feeling has doubled and I want to make sure we have everything she will need while we are away from home. I like to make lists for packing when I go anywhere for longer than a night and it really helps making sure I'm thinking through what I need. For our trip to Washington I was determined to be fully cloth diapered! Although it took up an entire bag of it's own, we brought the cloth diapers and had an interesting time making them work while we were in and out of all the places we stayed.

In my search to make it easier on us, I had dedicated a separate bag for all the clean diapers at the beginning of the trip and took a few out to store in the diaper bag while we traveled. One major thing I noticed about traveling with the diapers was it takes organizing and rearranging during the trip to make it not a complete mess. The bag I had all our cloths in at the beginning became where I kept our dirty cloths from our trip and the bag previously holding our clean diapers became the things we needed for our last night at the hotel. There will be other trips that I will get more practice with cloth diapers and probably have to wash them during the trip and I look forward to the experience.

Other exciting things that have happened for our family in the past two weeks is Claire being half a year old and how Chris and I dealt with Valentine's Day. Our little girl is under weight which has been a slight worry in the back of my head since I am working half the week and unable to always be there to feed her. I have put trust in my husband to start feeding her real food and now that we have baby food in our pantry, she is eating it like a champ! It seemed to be a sudden click on how spoons work and she learned so fast not to put her hand in her mouth while we are feeding her. We have been enjoying seeing her appetite grow and even noticed her seeming to be getting bigger as we feed her more often.

As for our Valentine's plans, we talked about how much we dislike crowds, useless presents, and the commercialized treatment of the day of love. I'm glad we are alike in our dislike for how I always used to see Valentine's Day and we can celebrate in our own way. Chris was happy with a present that he had been wanting for his gun because it was practical and gave him an excuse to get something he wanted. I like the sentimental stuff which we both admit that Chris isn't always good about, but I told him if he didn't do anything for me for Valentine's Day I was going to go on a spending spree. I was pleasantly surprised with a cute love scavenger hunt through our house with a heartfelt letter from him.

You have to know that my husband is not great at showing emotion in that way and I've only ever seen him cry once. I know how much he loves me because of his actions, but he is like his dad and isn't good at putting them into words. I absolutely am the opposite and cried at reading his letter that told me how he feels in the sweetest way. We are a unique couple but we do what works for us to show how much we love each other and I hope anyone who reads this finds their way to show their significant other how much they love them.

Running Tips

Claire's Life:

Our adorable little angel loves reading time right before she is put to bed and most nights can go right to sleep. She had a hard night this past week and convinced mommy at midnight to let her in the big bed. She is practicing rolling over with mommy and has done it on her own but not consistently; she seems to prefer to rotate by scooting around in a circle to see things. Daddy's is helping her learn to sit up and we feel triumphant when she can balance on her own for more than 10 seconds. She absolutely loves being in her bouncer while mom is dancing for exercise or even when we are all in the living room with her. Along with frozen bananas in her Fresh Food Feeder, she's eating apple sauce like a champ from a spoon! Entertaining her with toys and moving around is proving to help her develop and seem so grown up now.

Weather is warming up and I've been able to go running outside almost every running day this week which has been enlightening on how different environments and variables can effect my runs. I want to share the simple things I do to make sure each run I do is the best it can be.

Pre-run

Please stretch and do some sort of warm up! I usually start with jogging in place for 20 seconds then do 20 leg swings for each leg, followed by another jogging in place. I also do 10 walking lunges per leg and one last 20 second jog in place. It's nice and short so I don't have to worry about taking forever just to get started. Even before stretching I make sure to eat a small amount of energy full food and drink about 8 ounces of water so my body has energy throughout my work out.

Running

I feel like different environments are helpful in different ways, but since my end goal is a half-marathon that will be run outside, I would benefit from running outside. When the weather was too cold, I was running on an indoor track that told me the distance I was running was x number of laps. I wasn't sure of the distance I was running because I trusted the lap count but when I tracked it using my Fitbit it was always about .2 miles away from the count. I personally like running where I can track with a GPS where I'm going, but when I do that I don't have a good concept of my pace. During a longer run, it is good to keep the body hydrated so I am to drink about 8 ounces ever 15-20 minutes of running which for now has only ever been half way through whichever run I'm doing.

Post-run

I've learned from my husband that the best (and easiest) protein shake to have after any work out is chocolate milk, and I am not complaining. Along with being delicious and cheaper than many other protein shakes, it gives you the protein and simple sugars that your body needs after it has been working out. I've had it explained to me by my nutritionist husband who has read studies on what a body needs and I have experience with feeling great for the rest of the day as proof. Stretching out the muscles that have been running is a great way to cool down make prevent injuries. I know that when I don't cool down with stretching, I'm usually a lot more sore for the next 24 hours than when I get a proper post-run stretch.

Training

So far I've been gaining my running back little by little over the last 6 months since having my baby and it seems to have been a slow process. I love hitting a new mile long goal like 2 weeks ago when I was able to run 4 miles without taking a break in the middle. From my personal experience, I know having a variety of workouts is best for keeping the body improving. My week involves hill runs, long runs, and speed runs to get my variety and I also do a rest which is a weighted workout for leg day at the gym. My way of preventing injury is not overusing my muscles and being aware of what my legs are feeling during and after my run.

Morning Glory

"Early to bed, early to rise, makes a [person] healthy, wealthy, and wise." -Benjamin Franklin

I never thought I was going to be a morning person until I got a job in a hardware store called Menards while I was in college. I learned how to go to bed early so it was easier to get up for work at 5am 6 days of the week. It took a little while to get used to, but once I realized how great it made me feel I started loving it. Now I have another early morning job and I've been going on a year and a half at this job loving waking up early and feeling so productive. I wanted to share the ways I keep myself sane when I am the only one in my house who is a morning person at the moment.

Clean

My cleaning is mostly focused on the kitchen area where I can do the dishes or clean the counter while I make breakfast quietly since we still live in a small apartment. I am limited with the noise level I can produce while trying to let my family sleep in, but I usually put on a random video or music to keep my mind busy. I do get to start a load when it is laundry day early and get it going or finish folding some from a previous day that never got done. I try to be a human cleaning tornado with our living room and put as many things away as possible after the previous day's antics. Claire has stations or things and the toys migrate from wherever we want to play with her during the day.

Work

As I mentioned, I have a job that I wake up early for and I am so lucky to have a husband who goes to bed with me at a reasonable hour so I'm ready to teach. The company I work for is based in China, it is called VIPKID and is a one-on-one teaching classroom for Chinese children to learn English. With a year and half under my belt I don't have much prep for the classes anymore and just have to worry about little added props, rewards, and comfort when teaching. Although I may not naturally wake up as early as I teach, it isn't a chore for me to wake up for this thing I love to do!

Read

I didn't say all of them were completely productive, just that I feel more productive when I wake up before people. This is usually what happens as I'm waiting for classes or more especially if I'm really invested in the story I'm currently reading. Even if this isn't the most productive thing to do it is part of how I have time to myself which I don't always get during a day of watching Claire and getting everything done. Alone time is very important and everyone needs that time to refresh themselves so I like to take a bubble bath and read while the house is quite.

Work out

My working out right now is training for a half-marathon so it is a lot of running but it doesn't always happen in the morning. I'm lucky to have some days off of work so I know I can make time during the day to go to an indoor track and run if weather is too cold. I don't have the desire to run while the weather is miserable so right now this happens often but as weather gets to the bearable temperatures in the morning that will change. If I was into yoga, this is the time I would do it and if I lived in a place where loud noises wouldn't wake up everyone including neighbors I would do some dancing. If only situations were a little different...all the things I could do.

Blog

Since I just started writing this blog, this one is very new for me and although I only post on Sundays I get to work on it through the week. I have fun typing and getting my thoughts down from the previous night so sometimes it just random writing that I never even use for a post. When I feel like I'm stuck and not in the mood I know that I have until Sunday to finish and can walk away which makes things less stressful and forced.

Budget

I do enjoy budgeting ever since we started and found a system that works for us which I will eventually share even though its very simple. I check in on our money situation in the middle and end of the month and sometimes when I know I will be going shopping for groceries. Checking how much has already been spent helps me personally keep in our monthly budget and sometimes find where we can spend extra on a nice dinner. We have been very blessed with being able to put money into savings most months and I know it is because I plan ahead and constantly pay attention to our budget.

Taxes

Since the season is upon me, I have been collecting tax documents and will have time in my mornings to focus on getting our taxes situated. We get to do ours online and save information to come back to so my stress is spread to many small mornings and not all one awful day. I have the goal to work on it half an hour two times a week and be done before the end of February so my tax stress this year will hopefully be minimal. Crossing my fingers...

Other Hobbies

I find myself wishing I could do more hobbies but since my craft room is part of my office and nursery in my apartment I can't sneak in there while Claire is sleeping. I love to sew, scrapbook, make cards, cook, make holiday crafts, and many other things that are hard to do right now. For now, I find myself browsing Pintrest for ideas on crafts instead of doing them or recipes for dinner that I might do someday. I like to create new things for my teaching job too and that can count as a hobby since I print, cut out, laminate, and do other things for it.

Studying

If I was in school, this would be a great time to do some quite studying! My studying is only subjects I'm interested in these days which include keeping up to date one current events, doing puzzles, scriptures, and/or learning new recipes. Having different hobbies makes it easy to find different things to study and always be learning new ways to get better at those things. Life long learning and constant improving myself and my skills makes being a morning person the best!