Guests

We have some friends that moved away a while back. They're back in town visiting friends and family and they came by a couple of nights ago. Their daughter is halfway between Michael and Ava in age. They also have a seven month old son. The visit was lovely and notable on several points.

1. Our children stayed up later than they have in their lives (not counting the insanity that is infant sleep). They did remarkably well and both woke up bright and cheery at their usual 6:30 am as if they hadn't gone to sleep 2 1/2 hours later than usual.
2. My husband and I had a wonderful time socializing with our friends and fellow parents. We do not have such evenings often enough.
3. Their daughter was an amazing playmate. Our children already play well with each other. Their daughter's age and temperament blended perfectly with those of our children. All three children played together beautifully for about five straight hours. It was a joy to witness. I particularly loved watching Ava play and communicate so well with another little girl close to her age. I wish this family didn't live so far away.
4. It was fun to spend time with a baby. I enjoyed it. Ava enjoyed it too. He was babbling. It was adorable and bittersweet at the same time. I've mentioned before that babbling babies almost always inspire envy in my heart - not my best trait. Perhaps, that is getting better. It didn't feel quite as sharp this time.

I wish I had an adorable picture to share, but I was so busy visiting, that I didn't take any. I sign of a great visit I suppose.

Health and Fitness Plan 1.0

I was always a nose-in-a-book kid rather than a get-outside-and-play kid. In fact, when my parents would kick me out of the house to get some sunshine I'd bring a book out with me. Some people are active by nature. They love to be moving and get antsy when stuck in one spot for too long. I can disappear into a quiet activity for hours at a time and never once feel the need to get up and stretch.

As a kid, this tendency to be sedentary wasn't too much of an issue. My weight stayed mostly under control exercise free. Several times during my twenties I would half-heartedly begin an exercise program only to abandon it a few weeks later. Even then, the weight was not a major issue. Two children later, with my age creeping towards a whole new decade, I am getting a little frustrated with my weight. I have the 10-15 pounds I didn't lose after the two pregnancies in a row, and a slow steady creep upwards since then.

My husband, completely on his own, was also coming to the conclusion that he wanted to begin to exercise as well. Now that the children are a little older, we are all sleeping better, and there's a little more "free time" in our schedule, I was willing to commit a tiny bit of that time to exercise. Not too much, mind you, just a little.

We decided on 15 minutes a day. Start to finish it is 20. In order to actually accomplish that regularly, we wanted to chose a consistent time of day. We had tried the wake up before the kids and exercise plan before only to fail miserably at sticking with it. This time we decided to do the 15 minutes right after we put the children to bed. That's something we do at approximately the same time 7 days a week. If we exercise immediately after the children are in bed, we can still have 60-90 minutes for other activities before our bedtime.

We alternate days. The first day I'll do aerobic while he does strength training and the next day we switch. That's between 45-60 minutes of moderate aerobic activity a week and 3-4 sessions of muscle strengthening activity a week. This page on the CDC website says that 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity and 2 sessions of muscle strengthening activity is the minimum recommended weekly amount for an adult. Well, I figure our current regimen is a heck of a lot better than the nothing we were doing before, so this isn't a bad start.

If I decide to increase my elliptical days to 20-25 minutes I'd be closer to that recommendation (60-100 minutes per week). I'd have to do 45 minute elliptical sessions to meet the 150/week average and I'm just not willing to commit that much time yet. I'm pretty sure I couldn't sustain it. I think it is more important to establish a shorter routine I can sustain than a longer one I give up in two weeks.

We have an elliptical machine we bought shortly after we got married that was supposed to be the foundation of our fitness. Well, it worked well for a few months. Then it gathered dust for years during my pregnancies and the first few parenting years. Now we're dusting it off again. I found a great app for my iPhone by lolo that takes my music and uses it to make an interval style plan for my elliptical machine. The program lets you choose the difficulty level you want, and the length of the workout and it does the rest. So, I tell it 15 minutes and then it plays my music and tells me the resistance level to change the machine to every minute or so. It controls your pace by choosing music that has certain beats per minute and can even modify the beats per minute slightly to get you to speed up or slow down slightly.

lolo also has upper and lower body weight training programs, but I didn't like them as much. I found the music distracting and didn't like matching my exercise repetitions to their arbitrary pace. Instead I designed my own weight training routines. I pulled out some dusty books I had bought years ago. Strength Training Anatomy and Women's Strength Training Anatomy by Frederic Delavier. I really like these books and think they are extremely well done. I like the way it shows you through anatomical style drawings the exact muscle groups targeted by each exercise.

I designed three routines - an upper body, lower body, and abs/back/core routine. That way, I'll hit everything at least once over the course of the week. I used the books to identify the major muscle groups in each area and identified one exercise per muscle group. Each routine can be done in approximately 15 minutes, so it meets my requirements. All I need to do these workouts are a few different sets of dumbbells which I already owned.

My Upper Body Routine

Arms

• Hammer Curls - biceps
• Reverse Curls - outer forearm
• Wrist Curls - inner forearm
• Lateral Raises - deltoid
• One-Arm Triceps Extensions - triceps

Chest

• Dumbbell Presses - chest
• Dumbbell Flys - chest

My Abs/Back/Core Routine

Abs

• Crunches with Feet on Floor - upper abs
• Leg Extension Circles - lower abs
• Dumbbell Side Bends - oblique abs

Core

• Plank - Core-Abs
• Torso Swimming - Core-Back

Back

• One-Arm Dumbbell Rows - latissimus dorsi, rhomboid
• Dumbbell Shrugs- trapezius

My Lower Body Routine

Legs

• Squats - quads
• Floor Hip Abductions - outer thigh
• Adductors on the Floor - inner thigh
• Hamstrings on the Floor - hamstrings
• Standing Calf Raises - calves

Butt

• Floor Hip Extensions - glutes

Then I took a flashcard program I had bought to convert some of my artic decks into iPhone form for Ava and used it to make flashcard sets for the three programs. I took a picture of each exercise from the book and attached an audio file where I counted down either 60-90 seconds/exercise (Begin, halfway done, 15 more seconds, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.) Now I just flip through the flashcards, hit play, and work my way through each one ending at about the 15 minute mark. Lots of setup, but now everything is efficient.

And that's the plan at the moment. We're only about a week in, but we are actually both enjoying the brief workouts and find it gives us fresh energy to enjoy the time before bed. It also makes us feel a little more flexible, less creaky, and a little healthier and stronger during the day.

A decent beginning. Someone ask me if we're still keeping up with it in a month. I sincerely hope so/intend to.

The Weekly Review: Week 43

Weekly Main Event

Ava's IEP meeting was held Thursday morning. It went well. She'll be receiving 90 minutes of speech therapy a week beginning on her birthday and 15 minutes of consultative services/month beginning in the fall when she moves from daycare to preschool. It's nice to actually be anticipating the benefits of the transition from early intervention services to services provided by the schools. The program she'll be entering seems to be extremely well designed and well suited to her needs. I am excited and thankful that she'll have the opportunity to participate.

Ava this Week

Completely spontaneously, with very little encouragement or input from us, Ava has begun to night train. She's been potty trained during the day since well before she turned two. She just picked that up when we were training Michael. Over the last week she has begun to wake up in the middle of the night disoriented and somewhat panicked wanting assistance in going to the potty. She takes great pride in trying to keep her nap and nighttime pullups dry.

I am proud of her, of course. Is it terrible to admit that the return to inconsistent and unexpected night time wake-ups is very unpleasant? I wonder how long this will last? When will she learn to just take herself? Or, even better, just be able to hold it until morning?

Even with the inconvenience and disrupted sleep it is still a huge milestone and I'm simultaneously proud of her and amazed at how big she's getting.

The Weekly Michael

Have you ever heard the phrase, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."?

Let's just say that the combination of my stress level this week and subsequent impatience and Michael becoming a little older and more independent and stretching his wings has been a bit...unfortunate.

I'm desperately trying to be more positive and use more redirection. And I'll just leave it at that.

Ava's Weekly Home Therapy Focus

We're continuing to work on initial and final /k, s, sh, and f/. We're also working on initial /l/.

We chose /k/ months ago because Ava was fronting everything and didn't really have any back sounds at all. We finally have an approximation of /k/, but some nights it comes out flawlessly on every repetition of every word and other nights she substitutes /t/ every time and nothing I try changes that. Ahh, lovely motor planning problem.

We added /s, sh, and f/ recently because Ava wasn't really using any fricatives and she was stimulable for all three. She's doing remarkably well with all of them. /f/ is particularly easy for her and I'm already seeing occasional spontaneous generalization in conversation. /s/ is pretty good and with a gestural cue I can get a good production every time. /sh/ is a bit more difficult, which makes sense given that she has more difficulty with sounds that are produced further back in the mouth. However, with more intensive cueing, she's pretty successful there as well.

We added /l/ because it is a phoneme she uses daily. It is in the name of someone in her life. She really struggled with it for the first few weeks, but this week it has really clicked for her. She seems to enjoy it and is spontaneously using it correctly in conversational speech. It's a thrill for me every time. I love hearing the beautiful /l/ and enjoy watching her pride in making it.