I’m a planner. I like calendars, schedules, day-planners. I keep a detailed calendar on my phone that covers my Sunshine Shoppe, The Core, our family appointments, and the kid’s gazillion activities plus a whiteboard calendar in my kitchen with the family activities and another one at work with appointments and Core schedule. These keep me sane. I like to know what is coming next.
Every year in December Levi and I make goals for the next year. We are really good at meeting our goals. We have big goals for 2016…
1. Finish our upstairs game room/kitchen.
2. Knock out the wall between office and downstairs kitchen, repaint, new flooring, new French doors (Levi hasn’t exactly gotten onboard with this project yet.)
3. Purchase the lot next to The Core and prepare for expansion.
4. Introduce the kids to a new part of the world…Hawaii
5. Run all three Spartan races….Sprint, Super and Beast and earn our Trifecta metals.
Personally, I want to start making more time for my own fitness. I get so caught up in the business side of owning a gym and health food store while juggling the kid’s crazy social schedules that I have lately neglected my workouts and I am dedicated to making my fitness a priority again. My health and fitness goals boil down to being more toned by dropping 2% body fat mass and getting a muscle-up. (Great abs would be nice too.)
Writing all of that makes me want to puke. It seemed so doable just four weeks ago. But I feel like puking a lot lately all thanks to the oh so shocking surprise of that little plus sign on the expired seven year old pregnancy test we had to dig out of the back of our bathroom cabinet.
Having a baby was not in the plan…at all. In fact, we were planning on Levi getting a vasectomy this month and one week before we took the pregnancy test I had sold all of our baby clothes and equipment!
Jack and Addie are just so easy. Sure they are busy but they wake up in the morning and get ready on their own and entertain themselves until my coffee has taken affect. They don’t require stuff to go somewhere. We don’t need diaper bags or car seats. They just get in the car and we go. We were even planning on getting me a smaller SUV this year! Jack and Addie are fun and enjoyable to be around and are the best little travel buddies. They have the sweetest friendship I’ve ever seen between a brother and sister and we had absolutely no plans to throw a wrench in this seemingly dreamy world we had entered once they became school aged.
God had other plans. God has giant wrenches in the form of teeny, alien looking creatures that are the size of a raspberry but still manages to make me pee every 30 minutes, throw up for half of the day, and want to go to bed by 7. I mean, this baby is going to find the cure for cancer or something because our pregnancy prevention methods have worked for seven years, and one month before we make ourselves an official family of four God reminds us He is in control regardless of our methods and plans.
Baby 3 will be 10 years younger than Jack and almost 8 years younger than Addie. Jack will be a Junior in High School when this baby goes to Kindergarten. Addie can be done with Med-School by the time the baby graduates High School. We will go eight years with just one child living at home and I will be 51 and Levi 53 when this baby goes to college. We could even have grandkids in school before this baby graduates!
I know I sound disappointed. We are actually the very furthest from that. We are super ecstatic about our little surprise. It just took a few days to wrap our heads around it. But oh my goodness we are barely 8 weeks into this pregnancy and it is already so much fun! Having older kids makes this pregnancy a completely different experience because they understand and can be a part of all the excitement. Telling Jack and Addie was something I will never ever forget. They were completely shocked and happy but admittedly nervous about what a new baby will mean for our family dynamic. We told them right before we left for Angel Fire, New Mexico so we had many hours in the car to talk through all of our worries, fears, and plans for the future. We laughed about the silly baby names the kids were coming up with. Try to imagine little baby Wanda Pope. Addie declared she will happily change diapers as long as Jack is the snot-sucker-outer once I showed them this crazy contraption called a NoseFrida.
We feel like we’ve been given this amazing miraculous precious gift. With Jack and Addie I was always looking forward to the next milestone and, as much as I enjoyed their baby years, I feel like they flew by before I realized I couldn’t ever have them back. And now we get to do it all over again but this time we are going to soak every second up. I am in no hurry to rush through this pregnancy. This is the last time we will be a family of four and sharing this baby excitement with Jack and Addie makes me want to just be in this moment right now. It is why we announced our pregnancy so early. We wanted Jack and Addie to be in this with us and we knew they wouldn’t be able to keep our little surprise a secret.
I am also really excited to be as healthy as I am and continue on with our paleoish way of eating throughout the pregnancy as well as continue with CrossFit. I still plan to get that muscle up this year…whether it is before or after belly will remain to be seen. Dropping an additional 2% of body fat is obviously not going to happen but I still plan to focus on my fitness and work on staying toned and in shape…even if it is more of a round shape. The Spartan Trifecta is going to have to become a 2017 goal despite my best efforts to convince Levi to let me try to do it pregnant. I am hoping to blog through the next nine months about my nutrition and fitness choices, challenges and accomplishments made. I am sooooo excited to have a sweet round belly again and plan to keep this baby fed with all the foods God intended our little one to thrive on.
So far I’m feeling pretty blah. The nausea starts around 3 in the morning and lasts until about 3 in the afternoon. But let me tell you, after 3 I feel like a million bucks and am finally ready to eat, everything! I hit a wall around 7, which I must plow through because our workdays are long and the kids’ afterschool activities go well past that time. I am taking the Garden of Life Raw Prenatal at night but stopped for the last couple of days because I suspected they were causing me to sleep restlessly. It doesn’t seem like my lack of sleep can be blamed on them any longer, though. I have also doubled my dosage of Omega-3s and continuing with my B vitamins and Vitamin D. I find myself wanting seafood all the time and beef makes me want to gag. I was sad about having to give up wine but had read that a small glass was okay so I held onto that hope. When I had a couple of sips the other night at my birthday dinner, however, I wasn’t into it and preferred my water…which was a bummer. I am naturally choosing teas over coffee and had started to do that before the shocking revelation of my soon to be baby bump. I am really focusing on getting enough water and I’m continuing with adding fresh squeezed lemon juice and chia seeds to one of my water bottles a day. I have done this for a while now and love the results. The lemon helps pull toxins from my body and flush them out and the chia seeds provide much needed fiber and omega-3s. For anyone wanting to jumpstart some weight loss this is a great little cocktail. Add some grapefruit for an added fat burning boost!
We will see how things change as this pregnancy progresses but for now my biggest hurdle is reminding myself to slow down and just enjoy the moment. It has really made me rethink my plans for this year…obviously. Instead of wanting to tackle everything at once and dive in head first into all of our crazy projects I am more willing to take things at a slower rate and focus on being where I am at the moment. I really struggle with the juggling of life…all working moms do I’m sure. I feel like I am always trying to be all things at all times and I have decided that this year I am going to do things differently. When I am at work I am going to bust my little tail but when I’m with my family or at home taking care of household responsibilities I am going to focus solely on that. No more responding to texts or Facebook messages when I’m supposed to be off work. Work will have to keep until the next day because I’m not going to miss out on the important stuff anymore. I found this really great app called Evernote which allows me to keep track of all the correspondence I need to reply to the next day. I’m really loving it and recommend it for any professional juggler.
2016 is going to be just the best/scariest/emotional/crazy/joy-filled year! It’s a new chapter to our story and I can’t wait (not true...everything is already going too fast) to see what an amazing little person God has created and entrusted to our family. I have no doubt we will accomplish all of our goals but they may have to come about a little slower than originally planned.
And for the first time in my life I am okay with that.
Every year in December Levi and I make goals for the next year. We are really good at meeting our goals. We have big goals for 2016…
1. Finish our upstairs game room/kitchen.
2. Knock out the wall between office and downstairs kitchen, repaint, new flooring, new French doors (Levi hasn’t exactly gotten onboard with this project yet.)
3. Purchase the lot next to The Core and prepare for expansion.
4. Introduce the kids to a new part of the world…Hawaii
5. Run all three Spartan races….Sprint, Super and Beast and earn our Trifecta metals.
Personally, I want to start making more time for my own fitness. I get so caught up in the business side of owning a gym and health food store while juggling the kid’s crazy social schedules that I have lately neglected my workouts and I am dedicated to making my fitness a priority again. My health and fitness goals boil down to being more toned by dropping 2% body fat mass and getting a muscle-up. (Great abs would be nice too.)
Writing all of that makes me want to puke. It seemed so doable just four weeks ago. But I feel like puking a lot lately all thanks to the oh so shocking surprise of that little plus sign on the expired seven year old pregnancy test we had to dig out of the back of our bathroom cabinet.
Having a baby was not in the plan…at all. In fact, we were planning on Levi getting a vasectomy this month and one week before we took the pregnancy test I had sold all of our baby clothes and equipment!
Jack and Addie are just so easy. Sure they are busy but they wake up in the morning and get ready on their own and entertain themselves until my coffee has taken affect. They don’t require stuff to go somewhere. We don’t need diaper bags or car seats. They just get in the car and we go. We were even planning on getting me a smaller SUV this year! Jack and Addie are fun and enjoyable to be around and are the best little travel buddies. They have the sweetest friendship I’ve ever seen between a brother and sister and we had absolutely no plans to throw a wrench in this seemingly dreamy world we had entered once they became school aged.
God had other plans. God has giant wrenches in the form of teeny, alien looking creatures that are the size of a raspberry but still manages to make me pee every 30 minutes, throw up for half of the day, and want to go to bed by 7. I mean, this baby is going to find the cure for cancer or something because our pregnancy prevention methods have worked for seven years, and one month before we make ourselves an official family of four God reminds us He is in control regardless of our methods and plans.
Baby 3 will be 10 years younger than Jack and almost 8 years younger than Addie. Jack will be a Junior in High School when this baby goes to Kindergarten. Addie can be done with Med-School by the time the baby graduates High School. We will go eight years with just one child living at home and I will be 51 and Levi 53 when this baby goes to college. We could even have grandkids in school before this baby graduates!
I know I sound disappointed. We are actually the very furthest from that. We are super ecstatic about our little surprise. It just took a few days to wrap our heads around it. But oh my goodness we are barely 8 weeks into this pregnancy and it is already so much fun! Having older kids makes this pregnancy a completely different experience because they understand and can be a part of all the excitement. Telling Jack and Addie was something I will never ever forget. They were completely shocked and happy but admittedly nervous about what a new baby will mean for our family dynamic. We told them right before we left for Angel Fire, New Mexico so we had many hours in the car to talk through all of our worries, fears, and plans for the future. We laughed about the silly baby names the kids were coming up with. Try to imagine little baby Wanda Pope. Addie declared she will happily change diapers as long as Jack is the snot-sucker-outer once I showed them this crazy contraption called a NoseFrida.We feel like we’ve been given this amazing miraculous precious gift. With Jack and Addie I was always looking forward to the next milestone and, as much as I enjoyed their baby years, I feel like they flew by before I realized I couldn’t ever have them back. And now we get to do it all over again but this time we are going to soak every second up. I am in no hurry to rush through this pregnancy. This is the last time we will be a family of four and sharing this baby excitement with Jack and Addie makes me want to just be in this moment right now. It is why we announced our pregnancy so early. We wanted Jack and Addie to be in this with us and we knew they wouldn’t be able to keep our little surprise a secret.
I am also really excited to be as healthy as I am and continue on with our paleoish way of eating throughout the pregnancy as well as continue with CrossFit. I still plan to get that muscle up this year…whether it is before or after belly will remain to be seen. Dropping an additional 2% of body fat is obviously not going to happen but I still plan to focus on my fitness and work on staying toned and in shape…even if it is more of a round shape. The Spartan Trifecta is going to have to become a 2017 goal despite my best efforts to convince Levi to let me try to do it pregnant. I am hoping to blog through the next nine months about my nutrition and fitness choices, challenges and accomplishments made. I am sooooo excited to have a sweet round belly again and plan to keep this baby fed with all the foods God intended our little one to thrive on.
So far I’m feeling pretty blah. The nausea starts around 3 in the morning and lasts until about 3 in the afternoon. But let me tell you, after 3 I feel like a million bucks and am finally ready to eat, everything! I hit a wall around 7, which I must plow through because our workdays are long and the kids’ afterschool activities go well past that time. I am taking the Garden of Life Raw Prenatal at night but stopped for the last couple of days because I suspected they were causing me to sleep restlessly. It doesn’t seem like my lack of sleep can be blamed on them any longer, though. I have also doubled my dosage of Omega-3s and continuing with my B vitamins and Vitamin D. I find myself wanting seafood all the time and beef makes me want to gag. I was sad about having to give up wine but had read that a small glass was okay so I held onto that hope. When I had a couple of sips the other night at my birthday dinner, however, I wasn’t into it and preferred my water…which was a bummer. I am naturally choosing teas over coffee and had started to do that before the shocking revelation of my soon to be baby bump. I am really focusing on getting enough water and I’m continuing with adding fresh squeezed lemon juice and chia seeds to one of my water bottles a day. I have done this for a while now and love the results. The lemon helps pull toxins from my body and flush them out and the chia seeds provide much needed fiber and omega-3s. For anyone wanting to jumpstart some weight loss this is a great little cocktail. Add some grapefruit for an added fat burning boost!
We will see how things change as this pregnancy progresses but for now my biggest hurdle is reminding myself to slow down and just enjoy the moment. It has really made me rethink my plans for this year…obviously. Instead of wanting to tackle everything at once and dive in head first into all of our crazy projects I am more willing to take things at a slower rate and focus on being where I am at the moment. I really struggle with the juggling of life…all working moms do I’m sure. I feel like I am always trying to be all things at all times and I have decided that this year I am going to do things differently. When I am at work I am going to bust my little tail but when I’m with my family or at home taking care of household responsibilities I am going to focus solely on that. No more responding to texts or Facebook messages when I’m supposed to be off work. Work will have to keep until the next day because I’m not going to miss out on the important stuff anymore. I found this really great app called Evernote which allows me to keep track of all the correspondence I need to reply to the next day. I’m really loving it and recommend it for any professional juggler.
2016 is going to be just the best/scariest/emotional/crazy/joy-filled year! It’s a new chapter to our story and I can’t wait (not true...everything is already going too fast) to see what an amazing little person God has created and entrusted to our family. I have no doubt we will accomplish all of our goals but they may have to come about a little slower than originally planned.
And for the first time in my life I am okay with that.
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