Lesson Learned

Last night I learned a major lesson the hard way.

As my husband Nick, myself, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law to be sat around exchanging gifts, we made a couple return trips to the bucket of tasty chocolate treats sitting on the coffee table. My body was telling me that I had enough, but my mouth was saying "piss off, I want another" (apparently my mouth is English).

As I tucked baby B back in around 11, I snuggled down into my covers and shut out the day...until 2 short hours later. Rinse and repeat for the duration of the evening...  It got ESPECIALLY fun, for Bennett, at around 4:30am; he was straight up having a dance party and making sure that everyone around him knew how much fun he was having.

Bennett be like...

This is when it reminded me of a conversation I was having with my hair stylist that morning about coffee and her baby not sleeping when she had it. Typically my usual cup of coffee in the AM doesn't seem to affect Bennett at all, but I guess I didn't seem to connect chocolate with caffeine and happily stuffed my face with them. Touche caffeine, touche.

This morning, feeling awful and wired from lack of sleep, I started researching breastfeeding specific diets. A lot of what I already know/do is what I came up with (Paleo, Western A Price), but a particular diet that has always somewhat intimidated me (GAPS diet) kept coming up over and over. I ended up purchasing this book to dive into it a bit more. Have any of you read it? Done it? I should add, this is not a book strictly for "curing" learning disabilities...the diet is created to heal your gut, and our gut health is greatly related to our overall health.

And all of this was flying through my head just because I wanted Bennett to go to sleep. (holy cow, side rant, go to Google and type in "go to sleep" and then look at the images. What the hell people!?!)


Enjoy the rest of your Sunday. I'll probably go to the craft store and maybe a trip to the fancy health food market across town if I play my cards right (HAHA, I wish I could say I was kidding here...).


Much love,

Jen

Family traditions.

It's not exactly beginning
to look a lot like Christmas...

Lights have been hung, the tree has been trimmed and presents are EXPLODING from beneath our Christmas tree. It's the most wonderful time of the year without question, but this will be the first year EVER for me where I won't be freezing my booty off during this fabulous time of year. This year, Nick, Bennett and I will be flying solo for Christmas for the first time in our lives. How very grown up of us huh? Maybe so, but I would be lying if I said there wasn't a part of me aching for the snow and the chaos of being home for the holidays. It just felt like it would be too much for us to take a two month old baby in a plane (basically a flying tin can of germs and yuck), during flu season, to the north east. So, instead, we get to make some memories of our own here, just the three of us. Not to mention, next week we'll be taking the 9 hour trek to Nevada to spend some time with Nick's parents and introduce baby B to his great, great aunt Edna who is 112 YEARS OLD!!
The point of this is, I want to make our first Christmas home together really special. Yes, I realize Bennett doesn't know what is going on this year(even though I MAY have wrapped a few gifts from "Santa"), but I do, and I LOVE Christmas, and having our own little Christmas tradition would mean a lot to me. The one thing that I was really excited about doing was the Trolly of Lights tour here in SB (hop on a trolly, tour the lights...pretty self explanatory :-p) but its stinking sold out! So Nick and I are going to make our own version: on Christmas Eve we're going to fill some thermos' with some hot chocolate, bundle B up, and walk our asses down "candy cane lane" (a street here in SB where everyone goes Griswald style). Pretty excited about that :) Then Christmas night we were thinking of having some of our buddies here for a Christmas ham and maybe I'll attempt some homemade eggnog!


What are some of your favorite family traditions? I'd love to hear them!


Today's WOD:

12 min amrap

Bennett and his Crossfit buddy, Addison

• 10 box jumps (I did my first linked box jumps in about a year! I did have to swallow some postpartum pride and move back down to the 12" box to do this)
• 10 push-ups (on my knees)
• 10 squats
• 10 kettle bell swings (20#)

Every second minute on the minute you stop whatever you're doing and do 10 dumb bell snatches (20#).

score: 4 complete rounds plus 17 reps.

Here we go again

This was me, about a year into my Crossfit journey!

5 years ago, right around this time actually, I wrote my very first blog post for the Beautifully Strong Project. My goal was to give myself accountability on my new health and fitness venture so I wouldn't pansy out and stop going. What I didn't realize was that it would become a 3+ year long project that not only helped ME keep with my fitness goals, but helped others as well (how cool!).

Fast forward to present day. I just recently had a baby, Bennett Grey, (8 weeks ago already!) with the love of my life (Nick) and I honestly believe that Crossfit and Chiropractic made my pregnancy and labor the dream that it was. Due to a healthy pregnancy and a very boring, straight forward home birth (:-p),I was back at it in the gym after 4 weeks, and boy did I get a reality check. I had lost A LOT of strength. Now this is not to say that I wasn't warned. My sweet husband tried to remind me over and over that I would be in less shape than I was while pregnant, but I had no idea how winded I would be, how it would feel to have the sensation of your lady parts falling out, and to have absolutely ZERO core strength. The part I didn't realize would be the hardest of all, however, was the mental aspect. I told myself I wouldn't compare post-baby Jen to pre-baby Jen...but that is literally all I have done.

9 months pregnant

In the WOD today (Nancy) I looked up at the board on the wall with all of the best times for "Nancy" and there I was at the top of the list. I had this moment of wanting to swear, quit and cry (don't you miss my dramatic antics?) when I realized I couldn't do my overhead squats with the same weight, but had to drop it down 20 big ones; do one whole less round; and STILL come in around the same time as my time up on the board. This is when I slapped myself around a bit, puffed up my chest and said, "Get the eff over it Jen, you're starting over, and that's okay". So, naturally, it made sense to me that with a new "project", maybe there needs to be a new blog. Wah-lah, Mommy Strong was born (with far less recovery time than Bennett :-p).

So I am looking forward to sharing my new fitness journey with you, lots of stories about being a new mommy, Pinterest DIY projects (including the fails),coffee antics, adventures with me and the hubs, and more more MORE! This is not solely about Crossfit, you've been warned...at times even, you may think its a mommy blog (maybe it will be!). This really is about my life, and anyone who cares to can share the ride with me.

Much love,
Jen