And the Hits just Keep on Coming!!

To answer a few follow-up questions from my last post:

~The new career path (Ha! Melanie, I should just call you!!) is.... dah dah dah DAH!!! I'm starting a daycare in my home. For an entire year I've been trying to make the massage thing happen profitably while leaving Stephan's schedule to be his crazy schedule, and not wasting all my income on babysitting. While I still LOVE massage, and continue to study and experiment with bodywork, for an income it's been tough. Add to that the desire to spend as much time as I can with the new baby.... and Yay! We happen to have two neighbors expecting new babies this fall, and one of them already has a small one needing day care. So it will be a slow start, but I'm SO excited!! I've been spending the last month on websites, borrowing books, chatting up other daycare owners, and putting together the resources and knowledge base to make this a really fun and educational experience for everyone. Even more than "keeping them alive," I hope I actually can help the bigger ones to learn a little more about how the world works.

~Running is amazing!! I'm still in 2+ year old shoes and the aches and pains are mounting, but I've pulled in some 10 minute miles, and added some stroller-cross-training to the mix. With the Fitbit I've been watching my steps and really try to hit the 10,000 step goal every day. That has meant a LOT of walks to the grocery store (1.8 miles round trip!), to the park (0.8 round trip, but I can usually pace back and forth enough in an hour to get up to 2+ miles), and up and around the park district while swim lessons happen. Add to all that the diet tweaks (vegetarian-based!!) and I'm down 10 lbs since May!!!

Hopefully this year I can start sleeping more- that's a giant goal. We have a few more weeks to get the baby's schedule dialed in before kindergarden starts, and the rubber meets the road with the daycare. I remember working a full time job. It was busy, but stressful in the good "checking stuff off the list" kind of way. Cheers to that being the case in the next 10 months!!!!

(Sorry for the exclamation points. Maybe that sleeping thing isn't quite put together yet)

"That" Run

I went out for a run tonight, and it turned into "that" run.

It was that run that started as a 3 mile, but got an extra mile tacked on because it just felt so easy to do. The last 10 months (let's be honest, it's been since I got pregnant 18 months ago) have been hella crazy. I did not own my body, and a lot of things in life got tossed around. Stephan was finishing school, started a new job, this tiny roommate moved in and never slept... So many things in the last year and a half flew around the room like a bad scene from Poltergeist.

But today, this weekend, finally, things started to settle. Stephan found a groove at work. We got some really good news we've been waiting for about his school stuff. I figured out where I'm going professionally for the next few years. Sawyer started taking new classes that he totally loves, and is looking forward to kindergarden in the fall. My last cancer screening came back clean (7 years!! Yay!) The baby is sleeping.... somewhat... predictably... and I've actually started running 5 days a week again.

Today was the definition of "in the groove". Everything is settling down. Finally. We are all breathing much deeper than we have in a long, long, long time. And toward the end of the run this amazing song started to play. I love it. It embodied everything I was feeling.

Enjoy life!!