Monday: A long weekend (in feeling, not time) - Lots of young kids, melon fights, and some bloggy complaining

Sometimes I find having a lot of young kids (6, 5, 1 & 1) very tiring. This weekend was one of those weekends.  

I had the distinctively 168 hour / Laura Vanderkam thought that I currently work 32 hours a week (If I'm in work all week, which I haven't been for 3 weeks in a row).  I do my own sport (gym with gym buddy, circus class with other gym buddy, and any of my own running and yoga) around 8 hours a week.  I spend about 55 hours a week sleeping.  

The math shows I spend 73 hours a week parenting and managing a house and actively watching kids and doing all the stuff that family life involves.

I chose to have kids, and kids on good days (many days!) they bring clouds of joy.  I'm also eternally thankful I don't have newborn twins.  My kids are all healthy.  They sleep.  Problems are generally simple.  This is all good.

But also, toddlers are hard, and TWO toddlers is hard.  It's physically demanding and mentally exhausting.  They will be 2 at the end of this month.  They are amazingly independent: they can walk up and down stairs, open doors, they climb in and out of their own highchairs.  They feed themselves with utensils and Aubrey can even serve herself her own food at the table.

In the meantime, I have two other great kids who I feel I barely pay attention to because I am often maxed out taking care of twins.  Even when the twins aren't around (ie, if Andy takes them out) I am then desperate to get some of the pile of house and life admin done... sort the toys, do the dishes, prep the dinner, rotate the clothes, update the budget... everything.

On Saturday we had planned a trip to the pumpkin patch.  We have been every year and I booked tickets.  Lily asked for pumpkin waffles for breakfast.

I woke up at 6, prepped waffles. Chopped melon.

A screaming fight over melon ensued between the 5 and 6 year old regarding who got more pieces.  I had cut up an entire cantaloupe but it was apparently not enough and not fair.  In the midst of this, the 5 year old told me she did not like these waffles (the ones she asked for and I had spent 20 minutes making at 6am).

I definitely did not respond with kindness.  I told the kids we are never eating melon or waffles again.  Then I changed it to "we are never having melon or waffles for a month" which is more reasonable but also devolved into a screaming argument.

I looked at the rest of the weekend: We had morning pumpkin patch and an afternoon family party, followed by the 6 year old's birthday on Sunday where he would be out all day with Andy, and I would be home with Lily and twins all day again.  I told Andy I needed some me time and so I went for a 10 mile run.  

After the run I was too tired to be grumpy at the kids, or at anyone.  Success?

I'm currently on a work trip this week, two nights in Leeds.  I visited Leeds 3 years ago, around this time, and enjoyed it immensely.  I'm hoping I'll get the same thrill and distance and rest this time and come back with more energy and excitement for the remaining hours of my non work non sleep week.  

Anyways, no great realizations at the end of this blog post.  Sorry it's a bit of a whiney one! I know my life is filled with luck and opportunity and good things.  The sun even came out on Sunday...

They stopped fighting long enough for this photo

This Week - Reading, Swimming, Circus Skills, Weird Eating Patterns, Halloween Prep

This week has been *busy*.  Everyone has been healthy and it's been great to have our nanny back. I felt tired going into this week and still feel like I'm fighting off illness.  I also feel generally behind in all the life admin things.  I forgot to text birthday messages, I have a pile of kid party invites needing replies, and I've been eating most of my food at 10am in one giant meal which is probably weird and bad for me. 

On Monday night I went for a swim as a half marathon recovery and then I finished reading What Kind of Paradise which was a page turner and also... I wasn't super happy with the ending.  Maybe that's the problem with page turners?  So much about it was great, except for the part where I couldn't turn any more pages.

On Tuesday I had a post recovery massage which was amazing.  I've decided I'm going to book a monthly massage for myself.  Why not??  

In the evening Andy and I had our logistics meeting and we planned our pumpkin carving party invitation list.   We've thrown a drop in pumpkin carving party almost every year since 2021 and it's generally a lot of fun and pretty easy to do the same party every year.  We put out tables, buckets, pumpkin carving knives, and snacks, and people come and carve pumpkins.

We normally send paper invites because we love an invitation, but they have become expensive to print and even more expensive to send.  This year I will just invite people via text.  It's also odd to look at old invite lists and take some people off and add new people, but it's also nice to see people who we have stayed in touch with year after year, and to add new friends to the invite list as well.

On Wednesday I did my first circus class (my friends and I signed up for a 2 session taster) at the local circus training ground.  It was so much harder than I remember it - we did conditioning which I found tiring and then tried to climb silks and go on a aerial hoop.  

I wrote some blog posts about circus skills here, with videos from 2013 of me doing aerial ropes and silks.  This time I couldn't climb the silks at all.  Maybe I'll be better next week.  The teacher was the same and recognized me from 12 years ago.  Sometimes it feels really weird to have lived in the same place (mostly) for 12 years.

On Thursday (today) I met my gym buddy for morning gym and then was in work all day. I've handed off most of my old role now and have started to get stuck-in to the new role. It's so fun to have space to think.  BUT I am definitely not accomplishing things as fast as I hoped I would, and I'm starting to learn the limits of my own data analytics skills.  I'm enjoying learning new things, and I know I'll only improve.  

I meant to do a live strength class on Peloton today but then I accidentally scheduled a meeting at the same time.  Oops!  So instead I went out for a midday walk.  I've been in the bad habit of sitting in my office all day from 8:30am to 5pm and only leaving to make myself an omlette or other big meal around 10:30am.  I really need to get a handle on my food/eating situation.  Mostly, I need to eat food at the right time, ie the morning and possibly other times in the day.

Anyways, I realized I had missed my opportunity for a fitness class so I went for a walk instead, because I knew I could then be a minor part of the cool bloggers walking club! I couldn't find anything great to photograph so I said hi to these chickens and figured that was cool blogger-y enough for a walk?

This weekend is a busy one as well - tomorrow we have a playdate in the morning, and friends are coming over for dinner.  On Saturday we're going to the pumpkin patch (yay!) and to a friend's house for a sausage party (as in, they have a lot of sausages).  Sunday my oldest turns 7! He is going out with a friend (and Andy) to a local science museum which means I have toddlers & Lily all day.  Will have to make a plan....

Have you ever taken circus lessons?  Do you have any neighbourhood chickens? Do you carve pumpkins and/or have you ever thrown a pumpkin carving party?

Race Recap!

Today was race day.

I felt pretty OK yesterday evening and even managed to eat a decent dinner and get to sleep on time-ish.  This morning I had a egg bagel for breakfast and cycled down to the race start at 8:30.  UK races start so much later than US ones - this half started at 10.  Weather was surprisingly nice, not raining (yay) but I wasn't feeling super energetic.

I forgot to bring my water belt or my jelly babies (run snack of choice) which was a bummer.  I had remembered to make a half marathon playlist though.  It was mostly Imagine Dragons and and Taylor Swift.

I got into my pen at 9:30.  30,000 people run the half marathon in Cardiff - it's BIG.  I hung around with the 2:15 pacer and we finally started moving towards the start line at 10:15am.

Starting Pen Selfie

I *really* needed a wee at the start, and in a stroke of genius planning there were porta potties right before the start tunnel that had a very short queue.  I ran out of the starting funnel, had a quick wee, and made it back with the 2:15 pacer still in sight.  

Starting line - amazing portapotties just to the right

I was so excited at the start of this race but rather quickly wished I had water or some sugar.  Luckily there were lots of spectators giving out candies and jelly babies so I started searching for something easy to digest.  I knew there was a gel at mile 6 and water at mile 3, so picked up a water bottle and ran with it from mile 3 onwards.

I was feeling good until about mile 5, when I started feeling less good.  I had somewhat gotten in my head about running so close to being ill... on Saturday I was feeling super groggy and wondered if perhaps I had covid, and then wondered if perhaps I would die from Myocarditis, but googling told me that only 1 in 100,000 men and .2 in 100,000 women have heart attacks during half marathons.  Since there were only 30,000 runners this meant the chance is more like 0.06% which seemed small enough.  

At mile 9 I saw a medic running with a defibrillator and a person with pink running shoes getting CPR.  I don't know what happened, I hope they are OK. (edited to add: according to the news the woman did have a cardiac arrest but survived and is recovering in the hospital)

I reminded myself that the number one goal of this race was to finish without injury.  I could tell that if I was able to push my pace I would have made it in under 2hr 20.  But, I didn't want to push.  I had spent 1hr 45 minutes with a heart rate of 180 and maybe I was too in my head, or maybe I was being sensible, but I slowed down and just kept moving.

My chip time at the end was 2:24:23.  This is a PB by 40 seconds, which feels a bit... meh. I guess it's better than missing a PB by 40 seconds?  

I took a photo at the end.  I felt very tired and a bit sick, probably because of all the jelly babies I had eaten (also the half marathon)

Then I had to cycle home, which was 4.5 miles and felt like about a hundred.

Andy meanwhile had a very cute but very high energy day with the kids on adventure, and like a champion he kept managing the kids after I got home because I was so tired and had a headache and generally felt a bit "meh" for the rest of the day.

I did cook a roast chicken dinner, and did double big kids bedtime.  I wasn't *completely* useless, but it was a much different homecoming than 2013, where we went to a bar and then watched TV for the rest of the day.

I'm not sure road half marathons are my thing.  I am still keen to do more running but I'm wondering if maybe I would enjoy trail running more. It would be cool someday to be able to run a faster half marathon, maybe, but I'm definitely not feeling the urge to sign up for any more road races soon.

It's mountain biking season now anyway.

In case you want a recap of my last half marathon, I apparently blogged one in 2013. I think I've gotten a tiny bit more sensible since then.

Friday downer post - terrible race prep, depressing UK news, and a few happy things at the end.

Last week I did an accidental taper week, where I didn't do any of my planned running.  Then I ran a really unpleasant 9 miles on Sunday, although the last mile was walking because I felt completely out of energy.

I've been using the Peloton app half marathon programme, which is cool because the instructors talk  about running and strategy and fueling etc.  The big message from last week was "don't overtrain, get sleep, follow the low mileage plan, eat well, prep yourself for your race next week!"

So I bought some good healthy protein rich foods, scheduled my few shortish runs, and went to bed early on Sunday.

Since Sunday, my sleep has been as follows:

7:30pm to 5am.  The pink boxes are awake time.

Apparently two nights of up-ever-hour kid sickness threw me straight back to newborn nighttime insomnia.

On Wednesday morning Clara was ill in her crib.  So far only Aubrey and I have avoided the actual voms, but I have felt generally terrible this week and the nighttime insomnia is not helping.

I haven't done any running this week, and yesterday my great fueling consisted of a handful of pretzels for breakfast and a bowl of carbonara for dinner.

Basically, this feels like about the worst race prep one could plan.  I'm trying to put a positive spin on it though, because if I can run a half marathon while being ill and underfed and on very little sleep then maybe I can run a longer race someday?  Arguably this running hobby of mine was supposed to be fuelled  by the relentless effort of having newborn twins.  I don't have newborn twins, so I should be able to run this race. 

I was kind of hoping that becasue I had put in training this half marathon would be fun and feels somewhat good. Having newborn twins isn't fun and doesn't feel good, so perhaps this kind of race prep is the best I could hope for, and very fitting with my own motivation and personal experience

****

OK, now this post is going to take a somewhat dark turn.

I sometimes feel like I am living on a different world than my American blogger friends.  They/you(?) often talk about the weight of the world and things happening and I honestly don't always know what these things are.  I wonder if it's because of the news sources we have... I read the BBC mostly.  It could be that stories which are posted a little on the BBC are posted a lot on American news sites.  

For instance the tragic floods at the summer camp last summer was written about in the BBC, but it wasn't everywhere.  It was horrific, but it didn't necessarily feel ever-present.  I wonder if that's because of living over here.

Yesterday, during Yom Kippur, two Jewish people were murdered outside a synagogue in Manchester.  It is big news over here.  It is really horrific.  

I grew up Jewish, and I never questioned raising my children with the lovely religion I remember.  We have been going to kids club at the local synagogue on and off for a few years.  

I have always felt that the UK, and perhaps Wales, is more anti-semitic than I'm used to.  When I first got here I told someone I'm Jewish and he said "Oh I'm sorry!" which I thought was odd.  I was told many times "oh wow, I've never met a Jewish person before" but I always felt that it was important to be who I am and not "hide" being Jewish.

Growing up in America, I took it for granted that it was safe to be Jewish.  It is starting to feel like a big decision to raise children with a religion and history that might make them a target someday.  They have a generic British surname, and they look generically British.   Maybe that's an opportunity for safety that I shouldn't take away from them.  

****

I don't really have any good segue here, but there are happy things too. 

pre-circus selfie

• I took the big kids to the circus last week, before everyone got ill.
  
  
• I started putting fall decorations up around the house
• The Girl Next Door podcast fall Extravaganza!
• Sickness is probably done circulating around our house
• Next week is a normal 4 day week of childcare (we didn't ask our nanny to come into our infected home this week)
• I'll be done with the half marathon next week! Even if it sucks, it will be over
• I'm starting arial ropes, silks & trapeze lessons with my friend this month.  
• It's October. There is good in October.  We won't be ill and I won't be awake all night forever.
• I don't have newborn twins. 

What's the worst run or race or bike ride you've ever done?  Bring me some schadenfreude please.