New Endeavors

This week marked the end of my maternity leave and the return to working reality. Harper started daycare, I went back to work, and I started going to the gym again for the first time since January.

As for leaving Harper at daycare, let me just say that if guilt could be turned into electricity, mine could power a small nation. It's overwhelmingly sad to leave her there each day, and to see how exhausted her first few days there have made her. I know that eventually she'll enjoy it and that it will be good for her to be there, but right now it's pretty tough on both of us. We'll figure it out, though.

Returning to the gym has also been challenging. Between nursing and taking Harper for walks I've done pretty well losing my pregnancy pounds, but though the scale says I'm just five pounds over my pre-pregnancy weight, I'm not nearly the same shape--or in the same shape--as I was before getting pregnant. So I was excited to finally get back into the gym and make a dent in my new, squishy physique.

I had to join a new gym since we moved to Golden and my old gym is no longer convenient, and the first day it was like a brand new experience. I've realized that there is only so much room in a person's brain, and mine has reached its capacity: for every new bit of information I file away, some old bit has to go. Apparently all the new parenting info went where I used to store knowledge about working out, because I wandered around the gym looking at the vaguely familiar machines thinking, "Oh yeah, I think you sit here and put your legs through here and then pull down on this lifter thingy..." Thank goodness all the machines have little pictures of how to safely use them because several times after squinting at these pictures I realized that my vague memory was totally incorrect.

My attempt to use my abs was the most telling about the changes in my new squishy body. I went to the little stand that you can use to hold yourself up by your arms and contort your body in various ways in order to work your abs (hold your legs straight or bend at the knees, lift them out in front of you or turn to the side, etc.). I used to do 25 of these at time. On Sunday I attempted to do one, and only accomplished a half of one by grunting loudly and kind of swinging my legs toward my chest. I realized I was way out of my league and went to do some sit-ups on the floor instead. Yesterday I was back at the gym and was way to sore to even do those. Clearly the abs are going to take some time.

I'm not the only one in the family working out some new muscles this week. Harper has been getting pretty good at holding her head up, so this weekend we tried out the Bumbo seat. As you'll see in the series of pictures below, the effort caused her to puke a little, and by the end she was too tired to really maintain a sitting position, but she sure was cute.