Keep it up, then

For those of you wondering whether I am still working out, since I don't blog about it much, rest assured, faithful reader. I am. I did hit a wall a few months ago where I pretty much lost all motivation, and made it to the gym just once a week, twice at most, and rarely (if ever) for the morning workout, which is the longer of my two sessions of choice.

If you're not familiar with my routine, in a good week, I will go to the gym twice in the morning, and twice on my lunch break at work. Since I don't work on Wednesdays, I don't generally work out on those days since a) the gym is right next to my office, and thus when I'm not at work it is not nearly as convenient, and b) the more obvious reason that I am with the kids all day on Wednesdays and I'm fairly certain that my gym frowns upon using 3-yr-olds as spotters and tossing toddlers onto treadmills to keep them occupied while I go about my business. (Note: they do have a babysitting service at my gym... but I'm waaaaay too cheap to consider using it.)

At any rate, once I got over that hump of worthlessness, I was able to get back into some kind of a routine. I mostly only get there 3 days a week instead of my goal of 4, but that's okay. Morning workouts consist of strength training and 30 minutes of cardio, either treadmill, elliptical and occasionally even real running when the mood strikes me. Lunch break workouts are 30 minutes of cardio only, which is all I have time for in order to shower and get back in a decent amount of time.

So, its going well, but most frustrating is my lack of weight loss for the last 8 months or so. In fact, weight has been creeping in the wrong direction. I'm sure getting out of my exercise routine had something to do with it, although the trouble started before I'd hit that wall (and in fact I believe is some of what led to that de-motivation). At the time, I was taking a medication that I believe has something to do with that. Hopefully we'll start to see some correction soon.

But, the good news is, regardless of the number on the scale, I am in decently good shape. The race we competed in a few weeks ago helped to confirm that for me. Although our goal was first and foremost to have fun, and not be uber-competitive, it still proved that I was able to take on a pretty grueling day of physical activity and have a reasonably good showing.

In other bits of random, useless information, last night as I was putting Sophie to bed, she shared a new part of her vocabulary with me. I think she picked it up from the boys, as they had been involved in some dramatic make-believe role-play involving superheroes and villains. Anyway, I was getting ready to take her upstairs, and we were making the rounds thru the house saying goodnight to everyone. I said to her in my super-awesome mommy voice (you know, that babyish tone that is ridiculously annoying when anyone else uses it but is so spectacularly original when you do it yourself), "Sophie-baby! Are you ready for bed!?!"

And she responded in dramatic fashion. She held her head up high and declared loudly,

"NEVER! NEVER!

NEVER!"

Now, I'm almost positive she had no idea what she was saying or what it meant. And, in truth, the kid loves going to bed and is a super-champion at it. Last night was certainly no exception. But it was quite the show. You would have thought I was asking her to compromise one of her most sacred moral principles, or perhaps told her I was going to burn her prized stuffed raccoon at the stake.

Oh, yes, she's a character, all right.