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Knots

Lately, I’ve been feeling really out of whack. Like, A LOT out of whack. My stomach constantly feels like it’s in knots. I’m constantly questioning my decisions and over-thinking everything.

I found out this morning that FAFSA will no longer cover summer semesters, so I will be taking the summer off. As I stated before, I’m not looking to take out a loan (even if I wanted to my credit sucks). So this means that during the fall semester I will have to take five classes in order to stay on track. This means I will have to really really be on it. I can’t afford to get any bad grades, or fall behind in ANY of the classes. So that’s the latest development on the school front.

Emotionally right now, I feel as if I’m about to reach a fork in the road. Life seems like it’s standing still, and sooner or later I’ll have to go either right or left. There has been a lot going on in my head about a lot of personal issues that I’m having a hard time wrestling with. Usually I can figure all of this stuff out on my runs, but lately not even those are helping. I’m not exactly sure where I am. Where I stand right now. And for someone who always has a plan, this has been very hard for me. I don’t know if it’s the extra emotional strain of being a one income family again, or whether my hormones are just going bat-shit crazy but I feel like something’s wrong. With me.

Recently my mother told me I didn’t spend enough time with Emery. She thinks this is a big reason why Emery has recently started “lashing out” at me. Her words kind of felt like a slap to the face, and I walked away feeling like a failure. I realized that my days are usually filled with work, school, homework, & exercising. I try to make time for our walks, runs, dance sessions, garden time, and play time. Some days I just don’t have time, and my husband usually takes over. Now that Emery is two she’s pretty independent so for the most part she stays busy playing in her room with her toys. I use that time to go for runs, and I didn’t ever really see a problem with this. But maybe there is? Em gets to interact with three other kids at the sitters, so I wasn’t too concerned about her being socialized. She’s learning her numbers and her ABC’s. Mental development wise I feel like she’s right on track. But she has been acting up a lot. And it seems like it’s only with me. So, maybe I should put everything else on the back burner for awhile? I can’t help but feel like maybe there was some truth to what my mom said. I thought I was doing a good job with balancing things out up until she said something. According to her it might not be enough and I just might be losing precious time with my daughter which is the last thing I want.

My husband and I are doing good. Really good actually. It’s kind of strange. There have been no fights, no arguments, and no disagreements as of late. I know this is supposed to be a good thing. It feels as if we’re almost on the same page finally. But we’ve been together for a long time, and through out all of that, we’ve always had some kind of disagreement. I don’t mean like huge life altering ones (although we have had those), I just mean every day little things that kept our lives, for lack of a better word, sharp. We’ve always had these sassy moments that kept us on our toes. Recently, it seems as if we’ve kind of lost that. We’ve both been really busy and I think that we’ve kind of pushed our relationship to the side. It feels like we spend so much of our day dealing with everything else, and then if we have time we’ll spend some of it together. More often than not, we end our days with maybe 20 minutes of “us” time. I really feel like this needs to change. We’re too young to be that “old married couple”....right?

My Little Runner

Emery is all about jogging right now. It’s become her thing when we go outside and I’m pretty sure she got the idea after seeing me run laps around our block in the afternoons. So now when she sees me getting dressed into my workout clothes she runs to her room and gets her “running shoes”; demanding to have them put on. I usually oblige with the promise of us going for a run after I get back, and she’ll be waiting at the window for me. Shoes on, ready to go.

The first time I went out with her she ran just under half a mile at her own little pace. She would stop every now and then when she’d get distracted, but for the most part she would jog. For me, this seemed pretty awesome. Here was my two year old, running “long distance”, and loving it! But then I started to get worried. And if I’m being honest a bit scared too. All of a sudden I had all of these “first time mom” doubts piling up in my head.

Should a two year old be running such a long distance?

Is she pushing herself too much?

Will people think I’m making her run?

Do I need to invest in some good running shoes for her?

Will this mess with her feet/shins like it does to me?

How far is too far?

Should I make her stop?

I had no answers. I wasn’t exactly sure how much she should be jogging, if she should even be jogging, or if I need to make her stop altogether? How do you decided when the right time for kids to start running “long distance” is? I understand that they have a lot of energy and they love to run and play, but Emery was wanting to race for the most part. She gets that competitiveness from me. And I had to MAKE her stop at half a mile otherwise she would have continued.

When we would go on these jogs I always made sure to take water with me, and to make her stop and walk  a little bit before, during, and after her jogs. Then, a while back I read about the mom who ran her little girl to death, and I’m not going to lie I was afraid people would think that that’s what I was doing to Emery. I already get a lot of grief over the food choices we allow her to make (my kid’s pretty much vegan by her own choice, no joke). Some people have even had the nerve to say that I make my kid diet. I don’t. So the last thing I wanted was someone getting on my case for letting Emery jog or calling CPS because they think I’m making her run as punishment. So, I put a stop to the running.

After a week, Em realized we weren’t jogging anymore. For her being so young, she’s pretty vocal about how she feels, so once she realized we weren’t running anymore she’d start to cry every time I'd leave to go for my run. Then, as soon as I'd get back she'd say “I wanna go running momma. Please? Please momma?” When I would say, “No, baby not today.” She’d start with the fits. So, I finally decided that if I got an okay from her doctor I would allow her to get back out there.

Two weeks ago when Emery got sick I went ahead and took the opportunity to address my concerns and questions at her doctor's visit. And to my surprise she thought it was amazing! In fact, she told me to just take the same precautions I would when running (water, not to push too hard, sunscreen, cool downs, etc.) and to try to not let her run over a mile for now. She let me know that it’s okay to stick to my gut and if I felt Emery was pushing herself too far then I should make her stop and slow down. Other than that she told me that Emery was good to go and she was pleased with her for taking an interest in running. Apparently she doesn’t see this very often, and less so in children as young as Emery. She said she didn’t understand why with such high obesity rates in children these days, some parents don’t encourage physical activity more. So as far as she was concerned there wasn't anything wrong with Emery running.

I’m not sure why this put me at ease, but it did. And now we’re back at it. I’m trying to get a schedule worked out so that I can spend as much time as Emery wants on doing this. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like she’s “training” for anything, or like she runs long distance nonstop. Some days she’ll run a lot, and others she’ll just run around the house. But I never make her go any farther than what she wants. This is her thing right now. Who knows, she may hate it tomorrow? But for right now, I see how much she loves running so I want to make sure that she does get to continue to run/jog/walk at her own pace for as long as she’d like. I’m also a bit excited that she and I finally have something that we can share together. Just like she shares a love for the drums with her dad, she’ll share a love for running with me.

:-)