Sunday Update: Reading and Workouts and Sleep

Hey! It's Sunday!

We had a surprisingly productive weekend, which included a massive sort out of my office in preparation for an eventual room reshuffle.  Also, the kids have been staying awake far too late recently so I decided to switch their room layout from two separate beds to bunk beds in hopes that not seeing each other might cut down on the shenanigans.  It didn't instantly help, but it has meant that their room has a lot more space.  I've called it their summer room:

Old layout:

New layout:

Anyways, on to the anxiously awaited Reading, Workouts and Sleep Sunday Update!

Reading

This week I finished The Husbands.  I liked it!  I am not great at writing book reviews.  At first I had trouble getting into the fantasy element of it (I hate the idea of being in a new life that I don't know while everyone else lives their lives that they do know and thinks I am living my life normally to... if that makes sense?) but about halfway through I really got into the book.  And it managed to not be boring while still having a somewhat Groundhog day premise.

Then I learned that I had been using Libby wrong.  I thought that when a book became available I could either put it back on hold and stay in the queue or just do nothing and stay in the queue.  Apparently the doing nothing option actually deletes my hold.  So I went back through and re-held a number of items.  I sometimes couldn't decide which hold I wanted and I would just let the hold lapse, but I'll be better about changing the "deliver after" date from now on.  I pretty much use holds as my TBR (as well as a short TBR tab, and a much. larger "notify me when available" list).

Although I am first in line for a number of things I didn't have any holds come through in time for evening reading so I randomly checked out a skip the line copy of Happily Never After.  It was under the "popular now" section and fits my summer lighthearted chick lit reading.  I am enjoying it so far but will enjoy reading something a bit more cerebral or literary next. 

Workouts

It was a pretty good week for exercise culminating in a great 5k time for me!  I think there might be something to both strength training and interval training.  "Surprise!" says no fitness person ever.

Monday: 

    2.2 mile run (while listening to a Robin Arzon Peloton class).  

    50 minute workout at a friend's house (arms and core class from Courtney Black).  

    10 min Peloton Robin Arzon Postnatal Core 2 Class

    10 min Peloton Healthy Back Yoga class

Tuesday:
    15 min Peloton Arms & Shoulders with Tunde

    1 hour hike with a friend up and down a hill

Wednesday:

    1 hour gym session with gym buddy (Legs & Core)

    45 hour super casual bike ride out to dinner and back (22 minutes each way)

Thursday: 

    20 min Postnatal full body with Robin Arzon

Friday

    Watching all the small children all day (can't really call it rest)

Saturday

    Ran my local parkrun (5k Race) while listening to a Robin Arzon interval training program.  Strava gave me a 5k time of 29:20 which is among my best! Parkrun official time was 31:20 which is still pretty good. I felt really good and was able to increase and decrease the pace a number of times.  I got all introspective on how running doesn't get easier, I just get faster.  How twins don't necessarily get easier - I just somehow do more.  How I often look for sustainability in my running pace and in my life pace when actually sustainability might mean unsustainable efforts followed by more sustainable efforts.   It was a very introspective post run!

But also, these results.  Yay.

Sleep:

This week has been a fairly unsustainable one on the sleep front.  I stayed up late one night going out to dinner with a friend. The big kids have suddenly somehow realised that they don't have to fall asleep at 7pm and it's like the seal has been broken - they are sometimes up past 8:30 and it's driving me insane. I am generally having trouble sleeping past 4:30am, and often Audrey is up around that time and although she doesn't need me, hearing her chatting in her room makes it hard for me to fall back asleep.  She seems to fall back asleep just fine.

My average for this week has been 6.83 hours.

I've finally caught some sort of kid disease so I am hoping it doesn't last long.  Sore throats should be illegal in the summer.  All the kids currently have runny noses.  I had hoped that a good night of sleep would fix me, but unfortunately I was up with a sad Lilah and a grumpy Audrey last night.  Maybe tonight will be the night I get lots of sleep and feel better.  And if not, I will continue to thank the world for ibuprofin and coffee.  

Did you get enough sleep this week?  Have you read anything great in July?  Do you have kids and if so do they stay awake past 7pm and if so how do you have any grown up time??  Is ibuprofin your favourite painkiller?

Summer starts today

Today is Isaac's last day of school.  In the UK children start Reception (like kindergarten? but 9-3:30) in the year they turn 5, so most children start at age 4 and are now 5 or turning 5 before August.  Anyways, this is my first experience with summer since previously all my kids have been in private nursery, which runs year round.

Apparently, for the last day of school, Isaac's teacher is bringing her bouncy castle from her home.  That's what Isaac says. 

This "first summer" is definitely making me think of my own childhood summer holidays.  There's an energy of excitement and of building to something new.  At the same time... perhaps the new thing is just distinctly reduced childcare?

Isaac is very excited for summer at least.  I'm trying not to hope for the "chill summer" vibes because I have far too many small children for chill anything.  But I've done a bit of summer planning to try and take the inevitable edge off.  

We do have a summer fun list, including

• Go to a castle
• Go to a soft play
• Go to the bank
• Eat an ice cream
• Go to our local splash pad
• Go swimming
• Go to the library / do a summer reading challenge.
• Move kids furniture around / change kids rooms

Mostly on my summer fun list is NOT RAINING PLEASE which it looks like we might get soon:

Also on my summer fun list is "eat ice cream in a cone in my garden" but it's rained so much that we've already consumed all our ice cream indoors in the evening.  Except for the one time we let the kids get ice creams from the ice cream truck.  Please note, they are wearing rain jackets because it was raining.

I am sure the next 6 weeks of summer will fly by.  It's also sort of my last summer, since I go back to work in September too.  

Happy last day of school (UK!)

Happy random middle of summer day (US!)

Evening Hours Challenge

I recently signed up for an "Evening Hours Challenge" - one of the tasks was to think through current evenigns and try to add something fun.  My current evenings are chaos leading directly into terror over how little sleep I may get, so it's not a great situation to start with.  But as the babies are sleeping better (they are semi reliably sleeping untill at least 4, and sometimes till 5, and a couple times till 6!!) I figured i may as well think about how to use my evenings better.

I was asked to set three intentions of fun things to do in the evenings this week.  My goals were as follows:

• Do evening exercise
• Do a yoga video in the evening
• Write a blog post

I have done none of these things.  I am not an evening exerciser.  I was an evening yoga person until the babies started pulling 2am shenanigans and I started going to bed at 8pm.  And... I have not written a blog post.

Until now!

However, on Saturday Andy and I decided to watch a movie! We spent our free time deciding what to watch.  We picked American Fiction

Of course by the time we picked a film it was past 8:30 so far too late to start a film.

We watched it 40 minutes at a time on Sunday and Monday and Tuesday .  We really enjoyed it.  I don't know that it was "best picture of the year" and a lot of the characters were weirdly one dimensional but maybe that was the point.  

I guess that was a good use of my evenings, if not yoga or exercise or a blog post!

On Wednesday I met a friend for dinner.  It was great to leave the house in the evening and wear normal clothes (not kid running around clothes which is what I seem to mostly wear).  We met at 7:30 which is a crazy late dinner time for me.  It's amazing how quickly I've become accustomed to eating at 5:30.  I stayed out until 10:30 and didn't sleep until 11pm... but even waking at 5am today wasn't as bad as expected because I felt like I had done adult human things and not perpetual house/life/kid things.

Also I cycled to dinner, which is my longest cycle since signing up for Strava earlier this year:

I guess that counts as evening exercise?  So maybe I did do an evening goal??

It's currently 8:45pm on a Thursday.  It's far too late for Yoga.  Maybe tomorrow.  

Have you done anything exciting or usual with your evenings this week? Have you seen American Fiction? Are you an evening exerciser?

Sunday Udpate: Reading & Workouts & Sleep

Let's just jump on the now famous Sunday Reading and Running and Eating posts from Jenny and SHU and San (among others I'm sure!). 

This week I finished The Idea of You by Robinne Lee.  I feel like this would have been a great book club pick because while I don't think it's a particularly good book I would really like to talk about it with someone.  The basic premise is that a 39 year old mom starts dating a 20 year old musician.  Did I dislike it because the characters were boring?  Did I dislike it because it was cleverly inverting the "older man younger woman" narrative, but I wouldn't read a book about an old man who dates a young hot rockstar so of course I didn't like the inverse?  Did I not like it because the characters seemed perpetually able to go out to dinner like normal people while also being "the most famous person in the world"?

Also it was made into a terrible looking movie starting Anne Hathaway.  How is Anne Hathaway 41 and how is she also so gorgeous?  And how did they make this book into a film because my other issue with this book is it goes a little too far down the 50 shades of grey route of sexiness.  

I have a 7 day loan of The Husbands now.  It's quirky and engaging so far.

Workouts

I am still really into my Peloton app.  I also have friend workouts which I LOVE.  Working out with friends is the best.   I love socialising over movement.  Maybe it's the whole "approaching 40" thing but if I would so rather meet someone for exercise (riding? Strength training? walking? random sports classes?) than dinner or drinks.

Monday

20 minute run listening to a Peleton Run by Andy Spear.  

30 minute Pilates from Kristin McGee

Tuesday 

30 minute Barre class with sports friend. 

30 minute quick walk with friend and babies in carriers 

90 minute walk pushing the pram because babies were very grumpy.

Wednesday

Nothing. Just normal heaving 40lbs of babies around all day

Thursday (I had childcare so it was all-out exercise day!)

1 hour Core and Cardio with gym buddy*

45 minute Peloton ride on friend's bike

15 minute Arms & Shoulders workout on Peloton app

20 minute incidental bike riding to friend's house

Friday

30 Minute Full Body Strength workout on Peloton App

10 Minute Postnatal Phase 2 workout on Peloton App

Saturday

30 minute interval run (Peloton app)

15 Minute Arms & Shoulders workout on Peloton app

I've been listening to Peloton running soundtracks and it turns out interval training *is* the way to get faster.  I was doing a speed walk from Robin Arzon on Saturday but used it for a bit of running intervals / jogging and was incredibly surprised to see the following on Strava after.

I always thought intervals needed to be log, but most of what I've done recently is 20 seconds to a minute.  

In case you're wondering, I have abandoned couch to 5k now.  Probably because I've done a 5k now.

The main reason I've been able to get this amount of excercise is due to having childcare (our weekly babysitter) and husband with a super flexible job so he can watch babies for an hour.  I don't know where exercise will fit when I go back to work... but that's not for 2 months.  Anyways, I am feeling really good about my current level of sport.  

Sleep

Time log shows 8.2 hours on average last week but currently 7.3 hours average for this week.  I need to go to bed early tonight.  Babies are still shenanigan-ing at night, but I am pretty sure we are going to be on better sleep soon.  No one is feeding at night anymore (since Tuesday).  They're just... somewhat awake sometimes.  Here's 8:30pm to 5:00am:

*gym buddy knows I like crazy workouts.  For this one, he hung upside down from a rack while I laid on the floor underneath.  He did a hanging crunch with a 6kg wall ball, then passed it down to me where I did a normal crunch, then I passed it back to him from the top of my crunch.  I'm sure we looked ridiculous but I felt SO COOL. 

Have you read The Idea of You?  Have you seen the film? Do you like social exercise?  If you could do dinner, drinks, or movement with your friends which would you pick?

AI is not threatening my job

Here's a disjointed thought I've been considering.

It seems there's been a lot of talk recently about AI taking jobs or changing our jobs or making people redundant.  AI "Doing things better."

No one has yet told me how AI is going to run my family better than I do.

How is AI going to help with bedtime?  How will it do laundry, meal plan, apply for my daughters childcare funding?

Perhaps the screams of "AI WILL TAKE PEOPLE'S JOBS" is coming from a small but vocal group of possibly over-influential people?  Sorry if the CEO or the Executive or the "person who makes spreadsheets" is going to find their job minimised by a smart language algorithm?

(FYI, I am a person who makes spreadsheets and wants to be a CEO so I am not being totally "Not me so I don't care")

Anyways, while software engineers may be displaced (I am married to a wonderful software engineer also, and I do hope he keeps his job) I don't think AI will replace our amazing cleaner.  Or the workers at my daughter's nursery.  Or the nurses at hospital. 

Basically, It doesn't seem like AI is at risk of replacing classically female jobs.  

Is the "threat" of AI gendered as well?  Is perhaps the impact disproportionally applied to those who are most vocal, and those who are most vocal are mostly... well... men?

If I can be exceptionally direct here - If women can routinely get paid 20% less for the same job as men then maybe it's fair that computers can take the jobs of 20% of men?

I bet if I was less tired I would be able to write this screed better, but I've been up since 4am so this is how it goes.  And the twins will be up at any minute, which will likely take the rest of my mental energy for the day.

Twin things and feeding a big family

Today I took Nora and Audrey on a big adventure to the baby optometrist (the optometrist was not a baby herself, but she instead specialised in babies).  The visit was really interesting - Nora's eyes hadn't focused properly by 6 months but were apparently normal today, which was assessed using a series of cards and then some fancy camera with dots and sounds.  One of the tests (which Nora was too young for) was holding a magic eye card and seeing if she would point to or reach for any of the shapes.  Instead she put the card in her mouth.   

Apparently her eyes are fine, so hopefully I can capture better photos than this from now on:

After the appointment I thought it would be nice to get a coffee and people watch with the twins.  The first coffee shop I walked past had a queue and was too small to fit the double pram in.  So I walked to the second coffee shop, where I saw another family using one of the two high chairs already.  With only one high chair left for the twins I had to pass and instead got in the car.

I figured maybe we could stop at M&S and get something nice for lunch.  The twins have only ever been to a big Sainsbury's before because I know they have at least one twin shopping trolly.  So before going to M&S I called to ask if they had shopping trolleys for twins, and unfortunately they only had trolleys for single kids.  

So I drove home, coffee and shop-less.

Twins at Sainsburys

Twins is an interesting view of a world I didn't know existed.  I own a Mountain Buggy twin pram, which is the narrowest of the twin prams and is the same size as a standard wheelchair.  I find it interesting when people say "on can you fit in there?" or even one person who said "Those things are huge! sort of a menace!"... do people say these things to wheelchair users?  I assume no one is surprised when a wheelchair can fit through a door?  Or maybe they are surprised? or maybe wheelchairs can't fit through all doors?   

Anyways, I take up a lot of space with twins.  And we take up a lot of food with our giant family.

For example, our grocery shop this week (delivered on Sunday) included 3kg (6.6lb) of carrots (which cost £2.10/$2.70).  I just used the last carrot for our dinner tonight.  

We eat about 2 kg (4.5lbs) of potatoes a week.

We have already eaten 4 cans of chickpeas this week (making our own hummus and having a falafel dinner). 

We eat approx 3 dozen eggs every week.  This morning we had scrambled eggs for breakfast (10 eggs, 2 each for the kids/adults and 1 each for the babies).  

Yesterday we had crumpets and yogurt for breakfast, and a pack of 8 no longer feeds the whole family, so instead I had to get 2 packs of 8... although we do have some leftover.

We eat a 550g (1.2lb) block of cheese every week... more if we have Macaroni and cheese.

We eat at least 12 apples a week.

We order 3x 4pints of milk a week (about a gallon and a half?)

We eat 2kg (4.5lbs) of bananas every week

I've started having a standard shop of most of the above delivered weekly, and then we add specifics for our weekly meals.  But still... this is so much food.  And sometimes we need to get a few more pieces from our local shop to supplement our big order.  Our weekly shop is currently about £125-£150 a week.

(we don't have a pantry so food is split between open kitchen shelves and a cabinet unit in the dining room.  I try to only stock 4 types of cans - Black Beans, Chickpeas, Baked Beans and Chopped Tomatoes.  Right now I have a can of tomato soup for the kids and white beans for the babies, as well as my last can of pumpkin.)

We don't really eat out much (never for dinner, very occasional lunch or cafe) so I don't think our spending is unreasonably high, since a pizza dinner would probably be £50.  We make almost everything from scratch or mostly from scratch.  

This week's meal plan:
Sunday - Veggie Burgers and Roast Potatoes and Carrots
Monday - Veggie slow cooker spaghetti bolognaise
Tuesday - Falafel wraps with hummus and tomato and cucumber
Wednesday - Jacket Potatoes, Roast Carrots, Beans and Tuna salad
Thursday - broccoli soup and bread
Friday - Macaroni and Cheese

Do you think your family eats a lot of food?  Do you have any questions about twin life or big-family-lots-of-small-kids-life? 

Monday thoughts: Summer, Rain, Unicorns and Books

It is impressively wet

Is it possible to photograph rain?  Maybe not really.  However, here is my best attempt.  Look at our lovely outdoor table, all ready for summer dining al fresco!  Look at how wet it is.  We have eaten outside maybe 10 times this summer?  Ahh well, summer isn't over yet.  Probably.

Speaking of summer, although I'm not really in a "OMG SUMMER IS COMING" mindset, I do definitely feel like change is brewing.  It's got a bit of the Autumn feel, without the autumn cozy.  Isaac has two more weeks of school and then 6 weeks of summer holidays.  we have visitors for the first few weeks.  We have a smattering of childcare.  

I am making summer fun lists.  Visiting local gardens.  Swimming (potentially only indoors, and only when I have childcare for the babies, but for a kid a swim is a swim).  Eating outside?  I bought ice cream cones LAST YEAR and they still sit unopened because it was never warm enough for ice cream.  Also because it wasn't the right time to feed the kids ice cream.  

This weekend we went to a local agricultural show that included a tractor display.  Isaac and Andy were both very excited

Of course it was also raining.  Shorts and rain coats is standard Welsh summer gear.

The agricultural fair also had a unicorn!  Lilah was so excited until the ever practical Isaac said "NO NO I CAN SEE A STRING IT'S JUST A PONY WEARING A FAKE HORN!"

I watched a three year old's heart break.  it was sad.  She really loved unicorn.

I managed to finish Funny Story by Emily Henry in just under the 7 day mini loan and I so enjoyed it.  I'm not sure if it's because I read TWO great but somewhat "oomph my heart" books right before (Elinor Oliphant is Fine and Little Fires Everywhere) but it was just the lighthearted read I needed.  My next loan is The Idea of You.  

Next week I have a RACHEL DAY while our Nanny does a settling in day with the twins.  I am excited planning this day.  long run in the hills? Massage? Paint my own nails? Look at my calendar and dream things for the rest of the year or for next year?  I will have up to 6 hours of freedom!

In other news, we do family questions at night.  Lilah told us that she had a trick question for us.  The trick question was - "What is your favourite trick you can do?" 

What's your favourite trick you can do?  What would you do with 6 hours of you time?