Like everyone else on earth after New Year's, I vowed to lose weight. Sure I lost all my pregnancy weight, but eating take out and fast food at work since September has resulted in 15 pounds put BACK on in less than 4 months! I have all sorts of excuses as to why I don't exercise, mostly that I don't sleep and I don't have time. I couldn't figure out how to get to a gym at the end of the day and still be able to make dinner. The timing just doesn't work. Sure I could work out in the gym at school, but do I really need teenaged boys staring at my flapping arm fat and jiggling back fat? I think not. So finally, after much hemming and hawing, I stumbled across an old workout video I had bought. It's Gillian Michael's 30 Day Shred. It was still in it's original plastic. So much for motivation eh? Well, I bit the bullet. I figured it's only 20 minutes, surely I can find time to sneak that in. At first I would put it on right when I got home before I made dinner. But that got trickier and trickier, especially with a toddler trying to sit on your stomach as you do crunches and leg lifts. So now I do it after Matthew goes to bed. It's 20 mins, it's over quick and I have no more excuses. So how's it going? Good Lord am I exhausted! That 20 mins is BRUTAL! I had no idea a person could be so worn out from a 20 minute workout. I started with the goal of doing the video 6 days a week (with the goal of getting the whole 30 days over with as quickly as possible). But I found that I had very little motivation on the weekend to keep up with it, so now I'm settling with 5 days a week. I think that's still pretty good. I just finished day 16 tonight and boy am I tired. Of course, I'm sure it doesn't help that I got no sleep last night due to a certain you-know-who (yes, his good start has fallen into waking up every 30-60 mins for no apparent reason to the point where I have to sleep on his floor just to get him to sleep for a few hours). "They" say exercising gives you more energy. Well, "they" clearly don't have 19 month olds keeping them up at night! Sheesh!
So that brings up the topic of Matthew and sleep. In a new twist of our current 7 week old strategy, we (read I) decided that maybe more consistency would help. Since he seems to fool around with me, I proposed that Roland put him to bed every night without fail. I traded him dishes for bedtime and he jumped at the opportunity. It's working out pretty good in that the dishes always get done and I don't have to fight Matthew. However, putting Matthew to bed is STILL a struggle that involves crying and screaming. I figured after 7 weeks of this strategy, and 2 weeks of Roland only bedtime, would result in SOME improvement in the ease of bedtime. I guess I just have a stubborn child (like his father). And recently the boy has started waking up multiple times a night, eventually refusing to go back to bed. Twice in the last week I've gone into his room at 3 am, taken him out of his crib and laid down on his floor. He then follows suit and eventually falls asleep on his own. Last night, I put a camping roll into his room so I didn't totally screw up my shoulders and hips from sleeping on the cold, hard ground. Tonight he fell asleep nursing and I put him to bed. Only time will tell if he wakes up or not, but I suspect the first wake-up will happen around 10 pm. Which means I should probably shower and do the dishes and get to bed to get a few minutes of sleep before the night-long struggle begins. No one told me just how exhausting parenting would be. Or maybe they did, I just didn't believe them.
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