WHAT I GET OUT OF CROSSFIT

Yes this post is going to be about CrossFit and since CrossFit seems to be a loaded topic to some, I feel the need to put up some disclaimers here right up front:

• I do not think CrossFit is a cure all, nor do I think it is for everyone. It just happens to be what works for us.
• CrossFit has a reputation for being intense to the point of turning people off, and I think there definitely is a strain of CrossFit out there like that, but that is not what it's like where we work out. It is the most balanced gym I have ever been to or seen. More about this later.

That being said, here are some of the reasons why I'm glad we started doing CrossFit:

1. It has changed Ken. Ken has always been athletic and had his heyday back in high school for volleyball and tennis, but since then, besides the weekly adult league volleyball games, he wasn't doing much else. Add to that his questionable eating habits and there seemed to be little I could do to convince him that there was a correlation to how he ate and how he felt. Then we heard that one of the coaches we knew from RVC, named Chris Shaffer, was offering workouts at a local park one evening a week. We started going to them and loved it, so when Chris decided to offer CrossFit sessions in his garage in preparation to open his own gym, we were interested. We didn't know anything about CrossFit, but we liked the body-weight based workouts in the park and most importantly, we trusted Chris and his coaching abilities. We decided we probably couldn't afford both of us to take his classes, so Ken started on his own in August of 2013.

Soon after, Ken agreed that we should try Whole30, which served as a reset button and also a time to reflect on how and why we eat what we do. This month is also noteworthy because it was when Ken became much more involved in our day to day cooking and meal prep. We don't eat strict Paleo all the time, but we are mindful of what we eat and have been meal prepping together ever since. 

Not only did this time period change his approach to what he ate and how we ate, it changed his priorities.  He became more active overall; he had more energy to go out on the weekends, hang out with people, and play with our daughter. And as he got more into the weightlifting part of it, he spent his time in the gym and with the people there, rather than on the couch or in front of the computer. He set up a gym in our garage and invited people over to work out and hang out. I saw him fall in love with not just the exercise component, but the community component as well. CrossFit just happened to be thing that allowed him to prioritize, set goals, and develop his interests in building both strength and community. It's been cool to watch.

2.  When I started at CrossFit Bezel, Chris' gym, the thing that I noticed immediately was the community there.  By community, I mean a group of people who were working towards similar goals, who took the time to acknowledge each other, listen to one another, and be supportive during the hour we were working out together. People I barely knew were encouraging me to finish a tough workout, giving me high fives and offering solidarity. There was an energy in the gym that I didn't expect - I had usually liked working out alone and was surprised to find that I enjoyed this aspect of togetherness. Everyone who was there was so nice and seemed to have the attitude that we could become better by encouraging one another. 

That's what I appreciate about our gym. Everyone is at different stages and everyone has varying strengths and weaknesses. Everyone has great days and everyone has terrible days when doing the most simple thing seems hard. This diversity and realness is what makes community awesome anywhere, and it applies here too. Add to that coaches who meet each person where they are each day, who believe that the purpose of spending time in the gym is to be better out there in the real world, and you have opportunities to make real relationships.  

Even when I was pregnant, the coaches, Chris and Taylor, met me where I was each day and encouraged me. Not just by telling me what I could do, but by telling me what I should not do, in order to be safe. They even arranged for a sympathy workout towards the end of my pregnancy, which consisted of everyone strapping on a medicine ball to for their workout so that they could be 'pregnant' with me.

(My belly is the real one...that's Logan in there!) 

3. After a few months, I realized that this thing was something that Ken and I were both really into and an amazing thing that we could do together. I loved working out together, talking about it, and encouraging each other towards our goals. Often times we would end up at the gym to do a class together for a date night, since we usually weren't able to work out together, and (before Logan) we would frequently spend a couple of hours in our garage gym on a weekend afternoon, with Sloane watching us or even sometimes joining in.

4. I started appreciating my body for what it could do instead of what it looked like. I always liked working out because of how I felt afterwards - yay endorphins! - but I have to admit the primary goal of getting myself to the gym consistently was to keep weight off or just to avoid being too sedentary.  When I started doing CrossFit, I started becoming much more interested in finding out what my body was able to do. Can it be upside down? Can it do pull-ups? Can it lift that? Can it jump higher? It was exciting to employ my body for movement and strength, instead of trying to whip it into submission to look good in an outfit. 

Some days are better than others. It's been especially hard the past few months. I get discouraged about how much ground I've lost since having a second baby, lack of sleep makes everything feel harder and the cold is always a paralyzer for me. This past month I've been prioritizing sleep training the babies and I've been wanting to go to bed as soon as possible each night. And that's fine, that's my season right now. But I do miss consistently going to class; I know my body misses it.  Even if I can't go as much as I want to right now, I still try to go when I am able. Even on the hard days, my mindset is just to keep moving. I'm going in there because my body has been sitting in a chair all day, and my body is saying, I want to move I want to play! Even when I'm too mentally zapped to set goals, I'm obliging my body because I want to keep it happy and working for me for a long time. 

5. I think the thing that changed most about me after starting to do CrossFit is my perspective on a woman's body. I know I just finished saying that doing CrossFit made me appreciate my body for what it can do over what it looks like, but I'm also saying that we don't need to ignore appearances. In fact, we should celebrate them...for the right reasons. Once I determined that strength and ability was important to me, I started noticing that the way I viewed female bodies was changing too. 

One day, I realized that I wasn't idealizing stick legs anymore. When I saw a tiny girl with a big gap between her thighs, my first thought wasn't, "She looks so good in those skinny jeans!" It was, "I wonder if she wishes they were a little thicker so that she can clean more weight." And when I saw a girl with big thighs and big butt, my first thought was, "Wow, I bet she can squat a ton of weight...lucky her!" 

I'm not saying that I think all women should be muscular, I'm saying that I started noticing other bodies for what they might be capable of, instead of how they looked in a dress.

I naturally have muscular thighs and calves and when I work at it, I can build some good muscle on top too, but that was never something I was super psyched about...until now. It is awesome to me that when I put my body to work, I can make it be stronger, and I can make it look like how it is designed to be. I'm probably never going to have sheet rock abs but I am going to have what my version of strong abs are, and I love that.

It makes sense that we would think being stick thin is ideal, that's all media has to show! But once I saw what the world of CrossFit female athletes had to offer, I started realizing that everyone's body is different when it is strong. The goal can't be to look like a stick shaped you; if that's not in your gene pool that's going to be impossible no matter how hard you try. But you can look like the strong and capable version of you, and it's going to be totally hot because you will FEEL strong and capable.

This last thing is especially important because I have two little girls. I don't know what their bodies will grow to be like but I do know they will likely be unique and maybe even different from one another's. As girls living in this society I know that it will be easy for them to give in to the lie that their bodies must look a certain way, that their worth is based on how they look instead of what they are capable of. But I also know from my own experience that it IS possible to love your body exactly for what it is and work to make it stronger, and ultimately be able to enjoy your body in the amazing life you get to live.

THESE DAYS

Excuse me if this any of this sounds strained - I'm trying to hold it together in this cold weather ("arctic chill" they said! I'm not making it up!) and keep it moving, even though my body, like usual, is trying to put me into hibernation mode. The cold is just the icing on the cake - the rest of the cake being an overwhelming amount of work, house, and kid stuff that is going on. My mind has been overwhelmed and it is taking it out on the body - I've been having strange body things that I may attribute to stress, if I'm stressed. Am I stressed? I don't know. But it would really help if it wasn't so dang cold all the time.

Let me try to get most of the whining out here at the beginning:

It's cold! The wind hurts my face! It takes forever to get everyone bundled and out of the house! Winter clothes are bulky! Everyone is on the brink of getting sick! Runny noses! It's drying out my skin! My body aches!

Ok, that should do it.  Moving on.

Even when it is busy, ESPECIALLY when it is busy, I try to capture little bits and pieces from our daily life. I am of the belief that all these small things are worth exclaiming over:

COMFORT FOOD: AVOCADO TOAST WITH EGG AND ZATAAR. All day, every day.

I haven't been able to capture the facial expressions that Sloane does when she is "performing" a song and dance number, but you guys, it's so good. There's this one that is a eye-widening, look at you out of the corner of her eye, with a knowing smile, just short of a big ol' wink face, and that one is a winner.

Slow mornings are the best because that's when I usually put both girls on our bed and let them roll around and play together for longer than usual.

Our weekend mornings look like this.

A weekday morning might look like this.

And our recent grocery trips look like this. These little shopping carts are brilliant, until they're not because you end up pushing your big cart and also awkwardly trying to help your toddler push her little cart, and then they become brilliant again because she's old and strong enough to expertly push and navigate on her own, and you realize you can actually fit all your groceries in there, so it actually is a huge help.



She's been really proud of all the work Logan brings home. She wants to carry it around and shows anyone that cares, "Logan did it!"



We had a little visitor the other weekend, except little Faye isn't so little anymore, and each time we see her she is doing and saying more. It's a miracle no matter how many times I see it happen.

Sloane's art is taking over her walls! She's been putting her favorite pieces herself, and I'm into it because it gives me more chances to behold the awesome that is her art these days. 

We went to go watch a performance of Annie (by Character Works theatre) and it is so much fun experiencing plays with this little girl! The cherry on top was watching Sloane approach the girl who played Annie afterwards, say "hi" and get a picture with her. Sloane has asked if she could see this picture over and over again, since.

On the left is me and my little girl during intermission. I loved having her whisper her observations and questions to me during the performance. On the right are all the little girls we went with! 

It has been a long time since Ken and I were able to sneak out for a date, but thanks to my mother-in-law who came up for the weekend, we got to eat dinner at Metzger, which was so amazingly delicious. We snapped this photo of each other and then scarfed down our food.



It was also my MIL's birthday a week ago, so we celebrated with her and my sister-in-law who came up for the day. Travinia for lunch was really good and we had Frosting's cupcakes afterwards!

Hi! Happy Valentine's Day! 

I saw this on Busy Toddler's instagram and tried it out; it really is brilliant. Mix 6 tablespoons of bath soap, 6 tablespoons of cornstarch and 3 teaspoons of water, and then divide it up before adding food coloring. I posted another photo here to show Sloane's work; she loved it and it occupied her for 30 minutes. I poured some bubble bath into it afterwards along with her ducks, and that kept her busy for another half an hour. One hour bath! Win for the both of us.



Lastly, did everyone have a good Valentine's Day? The best Valentine's Day present ever from my mother-in-law: all of our laundry folded.

LOGAN AT 7 MONTHS

Around six and seven months is when it starts getting extra fun with a baby. There is a little less anxiety that something terrible might be happening if you glance away and there is a sense that they want to start learning what it means to fend for themselves. They are sturdy and strong enough that they can hook their chubby little arms around your shoulder and hang on, and gurgle back at you as if to make conversation, and flap and kick with joy when they see you, as if they're job is to make you feel like the luckiest person on earth. It is so gratifying to feel their love for you on their face. 

  It's also when food is a thing. Food has been a success all around, with green beans being the biggest hit so far. Sometimes I've had to mix green beans into her fruit in order to get her to finish it.   When we eat our food, she watches us with razor sharp attention - from the food on the plate to our mouths - and sometimes even licks her lips. She is definitely interested in food.

And sleeping. That's a major thing. I mentioned in the last update that we were sleep training, and that went well, well enough that this past week we moved Logan into Sloane's room. Some nights have gone well, some nights, not as well, so we are still figuring things out. Each night is a compelling drama of, will both of them sleep the whole night, uninterrupted? I'm going to keep at it, trying different things and celebrating the good nights. Safe to say, it takes up a lot of my brain in the evenings. 

I absolutely love it that she laughs when I laugh and her laugh is the sound of pure joy with whipped cream and cherries on top. She appears to love people and I joke that she's not a great napper during the day because she has FOMO - fear of missing out. 

I am so proud of how strong she is getting - she is still quite chunky with meaty butt and thighs - and she is now using all of that to get around the best she can. She rolls back and forth like a pro and scoots backwards all across a room. She hasn't mastered the frontwards scooting yet but I've caught her practicing by getting into crawl stance. She also tries incessantly to try to stand up while she's in her bath, and when she manages to do so, she turns to look at me with the biggest smile as if to say, "did you see what I just did there?"

I said this about Sloane too, and I think as a parent you are required to think your baby is smart, but you guys, Logan is so smart! I feel so lucky to be able to see all of these developments happen before my eyes again and I'm enjoying it all tremendously. 

WHAT I'M READING V. 13

To Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

I didn't plan on reading this book, mostly because all the hype around this book seemed shady, but then I couldn't help myself and the audiobook version is read by Reese Witherspoon, which seemed extra intriguing, so I gave it a whirl. I really liked being back in the world of Scout, and I instantly felt comfortable in and delighted at the storytelling of Harper Lee.  I looked up the back story of the publishing of this book, and this apparently was Lee's first draft before she wrote 'To Kill a Mockingbird.' She took this draft to her publisher, who told her that it needed a lot of work, and that the best parts were when Scout and her brother were children, so Lee rewrote the whole thing and ended up with 'To Kill a Mockingbird'.  This 'new' book got a lot of criticism, but I found myself enjoying it... until I didn't anymore. It took a strange turn and fell flat and I could see the ways that it was a first draft and wondered again how Harper Lee felt about all this. I'm glad I read it though.

Simply Tuesday by Emily P. Freeman

This book is all about embracing the small and learning to live well in the ordinary. This has been a theme for me in the past few years and I always appreciate well-thought out reminders. I've gotten to a place where I truly understand the value of appreciating small things, but in our current season of change, this line struck a chord: "I'm exploring what it looks like to release my obsession with building a life, and embrace the life Christ is building in me..." 

Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

I read another one of her novels, 'Secret History', and thought it was brilliantly written with amazing characters, but felt disappointed at the ending. I'm glad that didn't dissuade me from wanting to read this one; I'm only a few chapters in and I'm completely immersed.

Alice in the Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

This is definitely above Sloane's reading level, but since she is gets so captivated by stories and read-alouds, I thought I'd try it and so far so good! I know she probably doesn't understand a lot of the vocabulary, but she sits still in rapt attention anyways, and she has surprised me with how much of the plot she does understand. We are going slowly through it, and I'm giddy with excitement that I can share this with her. I haven't read this book in its entirety yet before so I'm reading it for the first time with her.

CHICKEN SOUP

...for my belly is what is helping me get through these winter months this year. 

My two current favorites: 

Sean Brock's Rabbit Stew with Black Pepper Dumplings, but with chicken, and Spoon Fork Bacon's Creamy Chicken Soup with Farro... Both were recommended by friends and I've happily made both several times over the past couple of months.

And two I want to try: 

A Spicy's Perspective's Greek Lemon Chicken Soup , and Cooking Classy's Creamy Chicken and Corn Chowder

And not chicken, but just as belly warming from past blog posts: a butternut squash soup and hot noodles with pork !

MOTHERHOOD RIGHT NOW....

...is having my toddler turn into various animals (in this case, a kitty cat) for hours at a time.

...is having my baby be overjoyed when she sees me. 

  

...is being delighted at their every interaction together. 

...is always trying to be patient.

...is playing a lot of make-believe.

...is holding my breath waiting for the baby to settle down for the night, breathing a sigh of relief and then immediately missing her.

...is excitement to go get the baby in the morning.

...is being busy kissing little cheeks.

...is enjoying them during the weekends and missing them all day at work on Monday.

...is marveling with Ken about how amazing our girls are.

...is feeling empowered and motivated like never before.

...is feeling content and grateful like never before.

...is appreciating the small things, even more than the big things.

...is trying to be the best I can be at my job, be a good friend and a loving wife, and also make time for myself so that I can love myself well, and show by example what that looks like. 

WHAT'S IN MY MAKEUP BAG

This is always fun, right? Peeking into someone's makeup bag?  Here is what's currently happening in my makeup and my toiletry bag. It changes often, but there are a few goodies that have stuck around.

Avalon Organics Vitamin C serum & Rosehip Seed oil:  My face washing routine is to take my makeup off with coconut oil and a cotton pad at night, and then wash my face with a basic cleanser (right now it's Neutrogena, but I also like Cetaphil and Aveeno). Then I apply Rosehip seed oil on my face, let it soak in and then apply moisturizer. I don't go fancy with the moisturizer, but I have been loving rosehip seed oil! It's very moisturizing and I've noticed it brightening and evening out my skin tone, plus it's super affordable. In the morning, I just splash my face with water, and then apply Vitamin C serum and moisturizer.

Cover Girl Natureluxe Silk foundation (in Dune): I have tried many a foundation over the years and nothing beats this drugstore version, especially at the price of $5-8. I love it! You can't find them in stores anymore, but I order mine off Amazon. My friend also told me about the Beauty Blender sponge, which makes it easy to apply the foundation, and I've been using that for the past couple of months.

Maybelline Instant Age Rewind Dark Circle Concealer: (what is up with these long names?!) Most of the reason I like this is because of how easy it is to apply. The rolling ball at the end of it allows you to roll it in the spot under your eyes or any other area of your face.

Shu Umera eyelash curler: my favorite curler.

Hwajin Korean foundation: My mom got me this last year and I've used it when I want some extra matte. I also sometimes use a powder over the foundation if I want to control shine.

Nars blush (Orgasm): Hands down best blush I've used. I think the brush is e.l.f. from Target.

Kat Von D liquid eyeliner: I try several different ones and keep trying variations, but so far, this one and Stila's liquid eyeliner are at the front of the pack.

Maybelline Colossal mascara & L'oreal Voluminous mascara: I do a coat of each; both are great and affordable. My sister in law also got me fiber lash mascara that I am playing around with; so far so good! 

Lanolin cream: I have gone to the source for my lip protection and healing during the winter. Lanolin is usually used as a nipple cream because of its healing properties and also because it is pure, so it works awesome for the lips. At first I was dubious about using something for my lips that are for boobs, but then I realized lanolin is in almost all lips balms and moisturizers! I apply it all day long and at night before I sleep.

Lipstick: This is probably my favorite make up item to shop for. I think lipstick can make such a big difference and I love trying new colors and brands. I'll have to do a whole separate post just on lipstick, but for now I'll mention the ones that I actually had in my bag at the time I took this photo. I like Maybelline's Color Sensational matte lip color (in Fushia fever) for how bright and smooth it is, and I also usually have a couple of these Wet 'n Wild Balm Stain Moisturizing lip color around - they are hard to beat at $3!

That's the round up for now -I realized as I was writing this that I could have included some other things that I use, like almond oil for my body, rose water mist for my face that I like as a pick me up, or the type of hand lotion that I use, but we'll save that for another post. Let me know if you have any tried and true favorites!