Bad to Worse

I am sick. I admit it. I hardly ever get sick, but now I am and I have been miserable. Part of what has made it so bad is that I was the last to get sick after everyone else was sick. So after dealing with sickness in my kids all week, I now have no energy left to fight!

But such is life and I'm a mom and life goes on. I can't stay in bed or take a nap or curl up under a blanket on the couch like my kids can and should when they are sick. I just medicate and keep going (albeit with just a tad of grumpiness thrown in there...)

After being stuck in the house all week last week with sick kids, I just had to get away after dropping the boys off at school, even though I was feeling like death. So where did I go? The gym. I can see now that perhaps was not the best place to go, but it seemed logical at the time.

Knowing cardio was out of the question unless I wanted my throat to close up and suffocate me (which I did not), I chose squats - a lot of squats.

When I finished the number I set out to do, I put the bar back on the rack and just laid down flat on my back for a good ten minutes, willing my throat to open back up so I could at least breath, let alone cough up the phlegm blocking the way.

Now, today, on top of the aches and pains of being sick, my body is aching all over! It had been a whole week since I visited the gym prior to that last one, so I may have overdone it a bit. I can hardly move. I'd kick myself if I could lift my leg...

My Coach

Since the birth of my third boy, I have been pretty disciplined when it comes to exercise. I have never been one who doesn't have to try hard to look her best. I am not petite. I am not "tiny." (Someday, I will do a blog about women's silly habit of calling of each other "tiny." But I digress...) Not that I don't have plenty of room for improvement, especially right after Christmas, but anyone who thinks I don't work hard to be the size I am, forgets that I gave birth to an 11-pounder, a 10-pounder, and a 9+ pounder, and one does not just "bounce back" from that.

I try hard to be healthy and when I feel I look good, I truly feel good and that helps all areas of my life.

That said, I can't always make it to the gym. I do go regularly, but with three boys, sometimes I just can't make it. Fortunately, my husband went ahead and set up a complete home gym for us almost immediately after I paid for a whole year's gym membership. (There was some sarcasm mixed with genuine thankfulness there, in case you missed it...)

Yesterday was one of those days I just couldn't make a gym visit work, so I waited until Jack was napping and took Mitchell down to the basement with me to keep me company. He loves that. Often times, he will do push ups or sit ups or make up his own completely ridiculous exercises that look more like fun than work.

This time though, my workout was actually something he could help with! He had my stop watch and timed me when I needed it. He stood on my feet so I could do sit-ups and yelled "punch me!" or "tickle me!" or "grab my elbow!" every time I sat up. He counted all my sets for me. He kept shouting, "Faster, mom! Faster! Time's almost up!"

He often gets in my way down there, especially when he wants to help or have a turn with the squat rack, but I have to say, yesterday, he was awesome! My favorite part was right at the end, after the timer went off and I was done. We were putting things away and he high-fived me and said, "What's gonna work, mom? Teamwork!"

Trading Flab For Scab

Ew... Just writing the title to this blog makes me cringe a bit.  The word "scab" is just one of those gross-sounding words - to me, at least.  What is to like about a scab, other than that it means your body is healing itself?  Ok, that is a pretty good positive aspect of a scab, but I mean other than that, of course!  They are ugly, they itch, they beg to be picked off, and even if you don't pick it off, it often gets scraped off on accident.

Well, apparently, we don't all feel the same way about wounds and the scabs that follow.  As I was shaving my legs last night and having to maneuver yet again around the giant scabs running up my shins, I cursed my husband for the workouts that cause such ugliness.  Every time a scrape is finally healing up and the nasty scab is gone, he writes into my schedule more dead lifts and SCRAPE!  Off goes a chunk of skin on the front of my leg again!  

When I complain to him about this, reminding him that the point of doing this exercise in the first place is to have better looking legs, not uglier legs, he checks out the scrape and just says, "Looks good to me!"  When I ask him to clarify, he says something about how sexy these scrapes/scabs (and the scars that are surely forming) are because anyone who knows anything will see them and know that I am "seriously working out now" instead of messing around with some cardio (and really, according to him, I might as well just officially not try if that is going to be my only work-out anyways.)  

Apparently, these scrapes mean I have good form or something?  To me, trading flab for scab isn't quite what I had in mind.  Can't we come up with an equally effective exercise that spares my skin and doesn't leave me scarred?

Squishy Mommy

Ben and Mitchell are all about the muscles these days.  Ben loves to show off to daddy how he can lift weights over his head, do squats and push-ups, punch hard, and run really fast.  Mitchell also loves to show off his moves, but his are a bit more...creative in nature.  He comes up with original excercises like hopping on one foot till he crashes into something, spinning around really fast until he gets dizzy, jumping off the bed, lifting Jack a couple inches off the floor, sitting and standing over and over again...that sort of thing.  They love to flex their little arms and say "feel my muscles, mommy!"  Every time they eat meat, they tell me how big their muscles are getting from all the protein.  

It is so fun to see them mirroring their daddy and "working out" with him.  I love that they want to be like him, and what is important to him is important to them (to a much lesser extent, of course.)  

The downside to all this is that I get compared to daddy in the whole muscle department!  That hardly seems fair given I am a woman and have had three very large babies.  I can't possibly be expected to keep up with Matt in this area!  Mitchell wanted to feel my muscles today and when I flexed for him, he squeezed my arm and gave me a look that said "No, come on - flex!"  He looked a little doubtful that I was even flexing at all.  Once when he snuggled up to me, he laid down on my tummy and said, "You have a squishy tummy, mommy."  Ah, well, honesty is to be encouraged, I suppose :)