In The Wee Hours of Morning

It's approximately 4:30 am. I am up and I am blogging. I normally get up at 4am to get ready for work, so I guess I slept in. The worst part...I am on vacation. I had trouble sleeping all night last night despite being wiped out by the emotions of yesterday. The two things that are still keeping me from sleeping. Aching muscles and my daughter's first day of school.

My second actual workout with my personal trainer and I am wrecked. I worked out hard and I am seeing the results in continuing muscle definition. It is as addictive as FARMVILLE. You may laugh, but I kid you not. I know they say it is bad because it is discouraging, but I step on the scale everyday. I want to see what's going on, keeps reminding me that I need to "tend my crops". The weight fluctuation keeps me grounded and when I can see a trending downward and I know that I have done the right things, I never get defeated by that upswing due to water retention or whatever. I love the increase in energy and the stress reduction that comes from being active. I love not being afraid to go to the mall because I am afraid that I will run out of energy and I love not being afraid to plan things with my daughters for the same reason. As a matter of fact, Erica and I have a day together all by ourselves. I am thinking about enjoying the fabulosity known as the St. Louis Zoo this morning. It's free and chasing a 3 yr old around it should be quite the work out.

I am still aching quite a bit from Wednesday workout though. In my back and sides. I need to let my trainer know because I have a three day workout schedule next week and I am not sure that I can survive that and this kind of pain. This also means that I think I am going to have to limit my home workouts to the pool, providing I do not feel better in the next day or so. Keeping active in some way is so important when taking advantage of this opportunity with a trainer. Finding a gym that is convenient for me when the trainer is gone is my next task. What's that saying? "Lack of proper planning leads to piss poor performance"? Scott? Can you help me out here?

The meal plan is going well though. I have been asked by several people about my meal plan and while I am no trainer or nutritionist I thought giving an insight to what I am eating might be helpful, so I started "Tweeting what I'm eating" I let you know exactly what I am eating. You can follow me @lifeinblubber on Twitter for up to the minute details of what and how I am fueling my body. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA still sounds funny to me, but whateve..

On to more pressing matters, My little Autumnpotamus' first day of school. (for future reference, I have MANY annoying nicknames for my children)It was all planned out, which was probably my first error. Jim was going to take Erica to the sitter and I was going to let Autumn sleep in and wake her up gingerly, feed her a good breakfast, spend time talking with her while we got her ready for her first day, then drive her to the daycare center where she will normally catch the bus all while documenting the entire experience on film. Um yeah..didn't happen that way. I woke her up, she was crabby. She quickly got over it once she realized that she was going to school. She didn't like the lunch that I toiled over, she wanted to buy her lunch the first day. I gave in. (it's the first day, right?) We get her ready, she slept funny all night so she had a large matted knot of hair right in front of her face, so despite every attempt known to man she ended up with a 1980s "poof". I made her wet her entire head, but no matter what I did, she still looked a bit unkempt. I left the house at 6:45 am and drove 15 minutes to meet the bus at daycare, the bus comes at 7:20. I wanted her to be early so I could take pictures of her on her fist day and pics of her getting on the bus. By 7:30 the daycare workers noticed us "playing Project Runway" and finally told me that the school bus sheet was wrong and the bus came at 6:56. I now have less than 30 minutes to get the most excited girl in the world to school on time and school is 30 minutes away. I shut the door and immediately started bawling my eyes out. I just kept thinking "I ruined the whole thing". Her little hand reached out and said, "It's ok Mama..you didn't know." :( I had to suck it up. It's not her job to console me. (but I am glad she tried.) Thankfully God and traffic were on my side. I get her to school with time to spare, explained what happened to the teacher and took her to the gym to line up with her class. I feel the hot tears coming on when she looks me with terrified eyes and says "Mama, please don't leave me here alone". As bad as this sounds, my hand to God, it's the truth. I pointed at her line, said "Hey, isn't that Adam?" and while she was distracted I bolted out the door. I cried all the way out and in the car. I felt like I was putting her up for adoption or something. I fought with temptation all day because of it.

My trainer told me that there are three reasons that we eat. 1. We're hungry
2. We're bored and 3. We are filling a void. The best advice she has given me is to say when we start looking for something to eat to ask ourselves, "Is it time to eat?" and then "What just happened?". The point of this is to force ourselves to identify the moments that we are "emotional eating" and to find other ways to comfort ourselves.

By the way, Autumn had a good first day of school. I was so excited to hear all about everything she learned. She told me "We played outside and in PE we just did push ups, which I HATE." Me too, baby...Me too.