Mother of the Year
Jack, Kev and I just got back from our Big Night Out. We went to Jasper White's Summer Shack for dinner and we're home and Jack has had his bath and is in bed and it's just 8PM. Sigh.
For dinner, Jack wanted nothing to do with anything that we had to offer. No Cheddar Bunnies, no pretzel sticks, no rice, no cucumbers, no Turkey Vegetable Dinner baby food, no corn bread. This is what I fed my son: French fries and soft serve ice cream. I am going to hell. I am going to hell because I was actually pleased to see him eat and didn't care what it was that he was eating. And I was overjoyed to watch him feed himself the soft serve ice cream with a spoon.
Wresting Control (Not)
For all of my adult life, I have exercised diligently. Enthusiastically, even. Cycling, Spinning, yoga, Pilates, running (until my knees/hip/heels gave out), swimming (after my knees/hip/heels gave out), tennis, walking, in-line skating, cross-country skiing...I loved it all. I worked out when I was travelling for work, when I was pregnant, when I was working night shift, when I had an infant son...I would just vary the exercise to keep pace with my schedule.
Suddenly, around the time I changed jobs a few months ago, I found that my schedule was being dictated by a baby and a dog. For the first time in my life, I found myself making excuses NOT to exercise. "Jack's nap schedule is too hard to predict," I whined. "I need to get Sydney out for her walk," I lamented. "I'm just so exhausted," I complained.
Well, sistah, it's time to put up or shut up. When Amy of Amy and Abby from the Playgroup mentioned that she thought that she would see me at the Y and hadn't, and that she has been going because she is training for a TRIATHLON (overachiever!), I realized that I need to get off my ever-widening booty and into the gym. Even if I do look like a sausage in my Speedo.
So, yesterday morning, I had Jack at the babysitting room at 8:45 and I was ready to go for my swim. I stayed with Jack for a little while and, when he looked interested in some toys, I made a break and headed for the pool. I wasn't in the pool for 10 minutes when one of the seasoned and experienced babysitting staff members came to tell me that Jack was inconsolable. That meant that these women, with years of child care experience, had been unable to make him stop screaming at the top of his lungs. They don't get you out of the pool because your kid is whining.
I got out of the pool and wrapped a towel around my waist and, with my swim cap on and my goggles on top of my head, I went to the babysitting room, where Jack was SHRIEKING! I was dripping wet and created a stir and several 3 and 4 year olds gathered around me asking, "Why are you wet?" and "Why won't the baby stop crying?" Good questions.
After several minutes of trying to cajole Jack, I realized that he wouldn't be happy unless he was clinging to my chest like a baby chimp. So, still unwilling to admit defeat, I took him down to the pool with me, convinced the lifeguard to let me in with Jack, even though it wasn't family hour, and did some water running while hoisting Jack over my head. Not much fun for either of us, but he tolerated it for about 20 minutes and I got my heart rate up.
Still determined to set my own destiny, on our way out, I signed Jack up for swimming lessons every Friday at 9AM starting today. Things went better today. Jack wasn't too happy during the lesson, but tolerated it and even liked some of it. Just for the record, what they do with swimming lessons at this age is to sing silly songs and keep the babies moving in the water. We sang that paean to the Plague, "Ring Around the Rosey," the ever-popular "Wheels on the Bus," the wedding standard, "Hokey Pokey," and more. We did that for half an hour. After that, I dressed Jack and brought him back to the babysitting room, where I told Tracy, the director of the program, that my plan was to give Jack a snack and then get him to nap. He ate his snack and then refused to nap. I darted out of the room, though, when he became involved with some stacking toys (which he loves) and prayed for the best. To complicate matters, I had decided that swimming was too inconvenient, with the getting out of the pool while dripping wet and all, so I would just do some cardio machines right outside of the babysitting room. However, I forgot my sneakers and so ended up in the pool anyway. I told the lifeguard that I was there, in Lane 2, when the babysitter came to get me. For the first ten laps, I looked up every length and halfway through each length, knowing that someone would be coming to get me. By lap 11 or 12, I started to relax into my stroke and hit my flip turns and stopped breathing water, and just enjoyed my swim. Half an hour later, and a little under a mile, I emerged from the pool and checked again to make sure that no one from the babysitting room was looking for me. I did a set of crunches, took a shower and dressed and rushed up to find that Jack had been asleep for the entire hour that I was gone. Did I just have a good workout?! Holy shlamoley, this just might work.
Stay tuned.
8:32:40 PM 
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