Sometimes it is important to stop and focus on the important things in life and next week I am going to have the opportunity to do exactly that. Our oldest son, Andrew, and his wife, Rebecca, had their 5th child (and our 6th grandchild) almost two weeks ago. James Craven McKown was born almost two full weeks ago. Unfortunately, the little guy was having a little trouble breathing and had to be moved to NICU for a little while. He came home from the hospital on Saturday and has been doing great under his mom's loving care. She is so happy to have him home where she can love and take care of him! Here is a picture of our newest grandson, all dressed up and ready to go to his doctor's visit on Monday.
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| James Craven McKown, 1/28/2013 |
Rebecca has asked if I can come out to help for a few days. With the four other children at home, and three of them being home schooled, she can certainly use the help. I am flying out Wednesday evening and will be there all day Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and until early afternoon on Monday. I wish I could stay longer, but with my new job, my crazy travel schedule, and an audit coming up, 3 days off work is all that I can manage right now. Even though the time I get to spend there will be too short, I am grateful that I have this opportunity to help Rebecca, meet Baby James, and help take care of Annika, Sharlynne, Taren and Caden for a few days. I am looking forward to being a substitute teacher, among other things. It should be a crazy, tiring, wonderful several days. I plan on taking lots of pictures of all the kids. I hope I actually remember to do that so that I can share them on my blog when I get home. I am also looking forward to this opportunity to spend more time with my daughter-in-law, Rebecca. As we have gotten to know each other over the last several years, we have found that we have some very basic things in common. Finding these traits and experiences that we share has helped us form a bond that I cherish. She is an incredibly smart, strong and loving woman and an amazing mother. The trait I see in her, as a mom, that I struggled with the most when my kids were young, is her consistency with her children. All four of the older children are smart, curious, independent, and creative (and I am confident that James is, too, though he is too young to show us this yet). They are a constant challenge because they are so engaged all of the time. Yet Rebecca has a firm hand on discipline, including assigning chores to each of them at an early age, that progress in difficulty as they get older. All four of them, even Caden, who will be 4 (Oh wow, I can't believe he'll be 4 already!) in March, have household chores to help Rebecca keep the house together. There is so much more there, chores are just a very small example of the entire picture, that I don't exactly know how to put into words, but when I get to spend time with Rebecca and her children I am always impressed by what an incredible job she is doing raising and educating the kids. My hat is off to her and I feel incredibly blessed and grateful that I am going to get to spend this time with Andrew, Rebecca, and their family next week.
I had my strength training session with Jeremy this morning and we focused on upper body. At the beginning of the month we established a goal for January of doing 12 good push-ups, so this morning that was the first thing I had to do. I hadn't actually tried to do 12 push-ups yet, but I thought I could do them and do them I did! I got down on the floor and knocked out 12 push-ups as if I have been doing them my entire life. This is a huge accomplishment for me. When I started training with Jeremy a year ago, I could not even do one push-up from my toes. I had to do them from my knees. My upper body strength has been slowly improving throughout the year and this morning I could see the results in my ability to do 12 push-ups without any trouble. We then spent 45 minutes doing a variety of arm, back, and chest exercises and I finished my workout with 2 sets of 10 more push-ups. Our goal for 2013 is for me to be able to do one pull-up. If we accomplish that it will feel like a miracle. I have never been able to do a pull-up, not even when I was a girl. Well, I could never do push-ups either. But pull-ups? They're tough! We have a lot of work to do, but I think we'll get there!! I love having this upper body strength. It feels great!!
I am proud of something very minor that I accomplished yesterday; I went to the gym and rode the stationary bike over my lunch hour. As you probably know, I have developed a very consistent routine of exercising in the morning. For months, I have tried to be as disciplined about doing some light exercise in the evenings; but I find it much more difficult to be consistent with exercise after work and I have been hit or miss on working out in the evenings. Phase II of my plan is going to require more discipline, because I need to get in 8-9 real workouts a week. I am doing upper body twice a week, lower body twice a week, running 10 miles a week, swimming 2500 meters a week, riding a bike 76 minutes a week, playing racquetball with Jack once a week, and we bowl on Wednesday evenings. Unless I start getting up at 3:45 in the morning (and I don't see that happening) to exercise, I am going to have to do some of those workouts at some other time of the day. Now that I am packing a lunch and I have a gym right around the corner, lunchtime is a natural option. I say that, but many, many times in the past I've said, "I'm going to exercise on my lunch hour today," and I haven't done it. Yesterday was the first day that I actually made it happen. The nice part about that was I didn't have to worry about exercising when I got home last night. I got to just come home and relax (after caulking the tub - the bathroom project is now finished!). Today, in addition to the upper body workout that I already did this morning, I have a 5 mile run on my schedule. My plan is to do that over lunch. It would feel great to get a lunchtime workout in two days in a row! I won't be able to run this evening because it is bowling night, so if I don't run over lunchtime, I will be behind on my schedule. I will get it done.
I am already thinking about modifying my schedule a little bit for the second four weeks of Phase II. For the first four weeks I divided the 10 miles of running and 76 minutes of biking into two equal chunks (I do all of the swimming at one time). I think I may start doing one six mile run and two two mile runs and something similar with the biking. That way I can devote a morning to getting the biggest chunk of my running in and a morning to getting a big chunk of biking done, and have shorter segments to do over lunch or in the evening. That may work out better for me.
All in all, 2 and a half weeks into Phase II, I am doing well. I have missed only one day of scheduled exercise and that was due to the need to rest after my trip to China compressed my workouts into one fewer day and because I spent most of Saturday on a home improvement project. I like my new chart (I will share it with you, along with a new short term goal, tomorrow) and I am looking forward to getting my body fat tested on Friday so I can have a base line for measuring progress. I feel strong, happy, and motivated. I am enjoying playing racquetball with Jack and am thrilled that we have been working out together on the weekends. I am looking forward to my triathlon in a little over 6 months and feel like I will be well prepared for it. What a difference 11 months can make!!!!
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