Recovering

Ethan turned 1 month old... last week! Time flies.  He's getting nice and chubby and is sloooowly increasing his sleep stretches up to 3 hours at a time (if I'm lucky he'll do it twice in one night! I was definitely NOT lucky last night, he woke up every hour).

I'm recovering very well, continuing to take things slowly even though sometimes it feels like "c'mon, you should be back to 100% by now!" I suppose that's one of the benefits of considering this our last time - I'm in much less of a hurry.  In fact, I'm torn about the baby weight. On one hand I definitely hate not fitting most of my clothes and can't wait to get back to being toned; on the other hand, what if this is the last baby weight I ever have? It's the last things I can hold onto of pregnancy, I can be toned for the rest of my life, why be in such a rush to get it off me like it's a disease or something?  So I'm torn.

NOT torn enough to skip the gym, though! Joe and I signed our family up for the Pueblo Athletic Club last night so I got to go to the gym for the first time since we moved away from Thornton (where I went to the gym through my first trimester, when we moved). I am so excited!  The club is less expensive (including child care) than Fitness 19 was AND it has racquetball courts, a pool (one indoor, two outside), workout classes, and their daycare has an indoor playplace! SO NICE!! Don't worry, mom,  I just went on the eliptical for 30 minutes, nothing strenuous, and Joe stayed home with the kids. I am seriously excited to use those racquetball courts, but I definitely need to feel more put-together (my insides still feel squishy and not-quite-in-place) before I go sprinting around after a ball. Still, it felt really good to be at the gym again and I'm looking forward to going all the time.

In other areas of my recovery, I feel like I'm recovering a lot of my former self lately. With that beautiful piano in my living room I've sat down to play nearly every day, whether it's 5 minutes or an hour.  Yep, I actually practiced one hour one night! As soon as my fingers hit the keys either Eli or Patrick yells, from wherever they are causing mischief, "beautiful piano playing, mommy!"  Joe tells the kids to quiet down so they can listen me play. Warms my heart :)  Also kinda makes me feel like a piano rock star!  Maybe they're buttering me up because they're causing serious mischief... At any rate, playing piano was a big part of me, so while I didn't have a piano I was missing a big part of myself, but it couldn't be helped so I just enjoyed it whenever I could accompany in church and left it at that.  Now? SO AWESOME, and I love being able to practice my talent for myself.

My kiss-ups ;)

Scrapbooking has also helped me recover myself, as Kari and I have finally made dates to get together and scrapbook!  Mostly it's just catching up, I haven't had a chance to whip out any scrap masterpeices, but it feels really great to be working on it again.  I honestly haven't scrapbooked a single thing since last Christmas, when I was working on an art project for my dad and my scrapbooking table was taken over by that, then I got pregnant and tired, then we moved and my stuff was all packed up, then we moved again and it was all a mess... but now, on Sunday nights, we get our pictures out and do a few paged while the kids sleep and I love it.

All in all, I'm feeling much better because I'm feeling myself again!  What a way to recover.