Hey hey! Happy Friday! This week felt long, probably because I was coming off 2 short-weeks from the 4th of July holiday. 5-day work weeks just seem really long sometimes! Here's what is currently going on in our world!
The book I'm reading is Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead which I'm really enjoying. It has dual plot lines - a modern day actor playing the part of a female navigator born 100 years before her. The book moves back and forth between the two women. I'm also listening to "Their Eyes Were Watching God." I typically do not listen to audiobooks, but I was stumbling over the southern dialect in this book so decided to give the audiobook a try. It's my July book club book and I am the leader. Should make for an interesting discussion!
The high of my week was when Will slept through the nigh 2 days in a row! Uninterrupted sleep for the win!
The low of my week was when he was up twice - at 12 and 3 - and then up for the day at 6 on Wednesday night. He was also up an hour after he went to bed. It must be teething? Sleep is a driving force in "good" and "bad" days for me. I wish I was the kind of person who could survive on less sleep, but I'm also an old mom at 40. Phil and I definitely talk about how parenting is a young man's game!
A recipe I made was picadillo in the instant pot with pinto beans (made from dry beans in the instant pot earlier in the week) and white rice. I don't have a recipe link to share because this came from Christopher Kimball's Milk Street Kitchen IP cookbook. We make this about once a month. Paul used to eat it, but like a typical toddler, he now refuses. *shrugs shoulders*
A show we are watching is Last Chance U on Netflix. It's about a community college's basketball team in East Los Angeles. Kids go there to try to get into a division 1 school. It's an interesting show and makes your heart hurt for kids who are overcoming so many challenges at home and in life in general. Interestingly even though I was not into playing sports, I LOVE sports documentaries!
For workouts I went for a walk on Sunday and Wednesday, ran on Tuesday and Thursday, and did a strength training workout on Monday. I will run tomorrow. I've established a pretty good routine of running 3 days/week, doing strength training 1-2 days/week and then walking on the other days. It feels sooo good to be back to being more active! I entered the lottery for the Twin Cities 10 Mile race on marathon weekend. My neighbor and I entered together as a team so hopefully we get in! If not, we'll do a different 10 mile race this fall.
The best money spent was on a blue tooth shower speaker for listening to podcasts while showering. Is this a necessary thing to have? Probably not! But I was trying to hear a podcast on my phone while showering which was really hard so I decided it was worth it to spend $15 on a speaker.
A podcast I listened to was the Good Inside Podcast on kid's pretend play with guns. I actually got Phil to listen to this one as Paul talked about pretend play with a gun this week. I love this podcast - the host is a child psychologist. She's so knowledgeable about things and I love her approach. This particular episode was especially helpful because the couple she spoke to have a 3yo son and a new baby. And their 3yo's mention of guns first happened at the dinner table, which is exactly when it happened for us. In fact, Paul said the same thing their son did (a comment about shooting daddy). I know Paul picked up on pretend play with guns at daycare as I have heard kids talk about shooters on the playground when I've done pick up. I'm glad we'll know how to handle it going forward.
My plans this weekend include very little. Phil might take Paul out to his mom's one afternoon after nap. She had a diskectomy 2 weeks ago to fix a herniated disc so he'll only go out there if she is feeling up to visitors. Other than that, we have swimming lessons on Sunday morning and that's it. We decided to stick with swimming lessons as I don't think we'd get our money back at this point and we figure the exposure to other kids swimming will help in the long run? After this session is over, I'll wait another year or so to get him back into swimming lessons and will try to get to splash pads and local pools as much as we can. Hopefully we'll make some progress on comfort in the water when we are up at the lake in August, too. He loved the Edina pool when we went a couple of weeks ago (they have an amazing kids section) so I know he can have fun in the water. He just needs to get used to me not being in the water with him/trusting another adult.
Bonus Paul and Will photos!
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| Working on his t-ball skills. He insists on wearing a baseball hat when playing t-ball! |
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| Tired baby Will. He has not been napping well at school for the last week or so. Maybe because he's teething? I think his top 2 front teeth are coming in. |
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| Loves yogurt! Hates carrots. He has gagged/choked when eating them the 2 times I've fed them to him. They are stage 1 purees so VERY smooth so it's not like he was actually choking on them. It reminded me of when my older brother would gag at the table when eating cooked carrots (he hated them so that was his power play to get out of eating them). |
How was your week? What are you watching and reading?
8 comments:
It sounds like a good weekend in store. I hope all goes well at the pool!
I’ll need to bookmark that podcast! That sounds interesting and good info to have for the future!
Fingers crossed you get into the lottery!
The kids are getting so big! It's a bummer Paul is not into the pool, but I think sometimes just letting it come naturally may be the answer. Just like his aversion to certain foods, he has to kind of try things out a little before liking them eventually (hopefully). I know that I was never a fan of tomatoes as a kid (too squishy and slimy!) but then when I was about 7 or 8 I had a cherry tomato off the vine and I was hooked.
I tried to read Eyes Watching God but could not get past the writing style / language / slang. I really did try! It was the same issue I had with Girl, Woman... I just get annoyed because it doesn't flow and then I can't continue. I will be interested to hear how the audiobook goes. As a side note, I have found that most "classics" or "must reads" that I read for book club have been disappointing (1984 for example, Catch 22 is another). I just don't love them!
I finished the French Detective novel and am reading Hello Habits. I also just finished an audiobook and will start another soon but I don't know which one yet!
I love listening to podcasts while I shower. I would say that currently, my time showering/drying off/ skincare/ doing makeup etc is one of my best windows to actually listen to them, besides when I go for walks. I don't have a bluetooth "shower" speaker, but we have just a regular bluetooth speaker that we set on the back of the toilet, right next to the shower. Using this, I can hear perfectly!
I am STILL reading the anthropology book about the lost city in Honduras, The Lost City of the Monkey God. I just haven't really been prioritizing reading as much this summer as I might like to. I still read most days, but oftentimes it's just a 10-20 minute stretch. This book is a little slower read for me, too, since it's non-fiction and has very little conversation (which I find allows me to read more quickly, like in lighter novels).
We are still watching This Is Us. I'm not sure exactly where we are at, but I think we are getting pretty close to catching up to real time!! The pandemic is officially happening IN the show, so we know it's pretty recent. ;) (I kind of wish they had just left the pandemic out of the show- like, pretended it never happened at all! I don't think everything in a TV show has to really "keep up with the times" (it's fiction!)...and I have found some of the pandemic related stuff regarding masking, quarantining, etc to just be a bit awkward in the show. As in, people are still all getting together during times that everyone clearly would have been much more locked down, or they have masks on, but then take them off, indoors, when they totally wouldn't have (or shouldn't have!) in real life (but they take them off so we can hear them, I'm assuming!). In the scene we watched last night, Randall and Beth travel to learn more about his birth mom, and there are a bunch of comments about them "quarantining and testing" before traveling, etc that seemed a little too forced and just awkward. Anyway, I just find it all a little funny and a bit odd sometimes. Would have kind of preferred that the pandemic just didn't make an appearance in the show, personally! :-) Lol! Although I'm sure it's a hard thing for the writers to navigate- keeping the show going while still trying to model responsibility.
I have Last Chance U on my to-be-watched list! It sounds really heartwarming.
That Good Inside podcast sounds fascinating! When I worked at a preschool, I remember kids constantly putting each other in "jail" for silly things, and I always wondered where they got that idea from!
I hope Will starts sleeping better soon. I would not do well on so little sleep!
So glad you've been able to establish a more regular workout routine. I know you've missed that.
Yay for the workouts and speaker (money well spent, I say) and boo for the sleeping. Hope he gets back to longer stretches and soon.
I have never had a shower speaker, but that is a great purchase. I think Christopher and I would both love one of those, so that might be something we get one day (we are terrible at shopping and talk about buying things for years before actually getting around to it, ha!) But, I think I would LOVE listening to music in the shower.
Watching Currently - "Atypical" on Netflix. We both love this show. The main character is an autistic teenager, and it's a great, very realistic family drama/comedy.
Reading Currently - "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking" by Susan Cain. So far, so good!
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