Line a day journaling, yoga update, and also giant sandwiches.

Photo has nothing to do with post, but kids do love a shower crayon

I have a line day journal that I had filled out daily since 31st December 2020.  I feel it says a lot about my personality that I didn't start it on 1st January 2021, but instead went for 31st December.  This means that I am now in my final year of the 5 years.  On each page, above me, are 4 years of memories and I just need to fill in the 5th year.

And I am writing once every 3-4 days now.  And I am almost never reading the previous days.  There are blanks and I have almost no interest in continuing it.  Every day for the previous 4 years I would write an entry.  This year... I don't want to.

Here is the headline theme of my previous 5 years

2021: 6 month old year old and 2 year old at home during lockdown
2022: work/nursery, reemerging from covid
2023: Pregnant with twins
2024: newborn twins

I know I chose and wanted close-together kids but also reading my 5 year journal is not really nice.  Which is odd, because reading this blog which covers the same time period is sometimes nice!  And I feel like maybe it's odd that when I write a journal for me it's a bunch of complaining (I mean, it's legit complaining, but also complaining) or even worse is the entries that are *not* complaining but should be.  

For instance, April 28th 2021:

Lilly (6 months old) only woke at 10/12/3:30 & 6:30 but only had two feeds.  Yay but I'm still tired? Pubs are now opening for outdoor pre-booked drinks only, no food.

So... my curiosity at why I'm tired with that awful sleep schedule means that somehow that night of sleep was better than previous nights?  Also, I forget that the idea of buying a drink outside 14 months after covid started (4 months after vaccines) was new and exciting.  

Anyways, I am sort of excited for the next 5 year journal.  Maybe I need to do a better theme or writing prompt or something.  Also I will start it on January 1st next time rather than December 31st.

Yoga Update
As expected, my daily yoga practice finished the first day I couldn't get my daily yoga in.  Last week I got up at 5:15, got up to yoga at 5:35, and Nora woke up at 5:40am. I turned off yoga and haven't started it again.  Instead, I've been sleeping until nearly 6.  

The problem with my yoga practice (which I knew from time tracking) was that I went from averaging 7.5 hours of sleep a night to 6.5 hours of sleep a night.  Since I need more sleep than 6.5 hours I knew something was going to give. We have a guest visiting and it's half term holiday in school (in Wales schools finish for the summer in late July - very different than the US!) and so I'm spending all day with kids and evenings with guest and yoga or exercise is just not happening.  Oh well, there's always next week.

Big Family Benefits

One kind of satisfying thing about having such a big family is that food comes readily portioned for our group.  Earlier this week we packed a picnic.  Here is the sandwich I made for the kids and adults:

There was some cheese left, but not much.  Also, white bread and brie is a pretty good sandwich (we added chutney to the adult side)

Whenever we make pasta we just use a whole bag (they come in 500g bags here) so no portioning or weighing needed.

Do you do a line-a-day journal? Do you like it? Does it differ in tone and content from your blog? Would you find turning an entire baguette into a sandwich satisfying?

Hoover tales on a Sunday.

We got a new hoover.  It is a Henry.  British people love this hoover, I was skeptical but since hoovering is Andy's thing (I have a cordless thing I use most... Andy is the proper hoover-er) he did the research and thought a Henry was right.

This is a Henry:

The old hoover was £75 and the first new hoover we ever bought and £75 seemed soo expensive 10 years ago.  This hoover was not much more expensive, but I just don't get the "Henry" thing.  Why is Henry so happy? Is this a hoover than exists in the states? 

I finally decided to hoover with it since we still don't have a cleaner and my yoga practice has made me more acquainted with the amount of dirt and hair on the floor of my office.

Hoovering was going well - it is a very strong hoover and with the long cord thing I could get behind furniture etc. 

As I was spot hoovering the floor and wall I accidentally hoovered up one of my workout socks.  

side note: maybe this is why I should pick *everything* off the the floor before I start hoovering instead of thinking I will just quickly hoover around things on the floor?

Another side note: these socks are thin ankle socks that came in a pack of 5.  I have had a single sock floating around for months.  I eventually threw away the single sock and then I still have a single sock, which means I guess I threw away partner sock? So I threw away partner sock and I STILL seem to have single sock??  

After hoovering up either single or partner sock I took the other two floor socks (why did I have 3 floor socks??! what is happening, I promise I only ever wear two socks at a time) and moved them to safety across the room.  

Then I stood up, turned around while holding the hoover nozzle, and accidentally hoovered both of those socks up too.

Even though the socks were cheap and old I felt that hoovering three socks up is rather excessive so I tried to get the socks out but it's a bagged hoover and socks do not survive well in a bag of house grime for even a minute.  

Lessons Learned

• A Henry hoover is pretty good at hovering, despite looking so... odd.
• I am not good at hoovering (I knew this) 
• There is a reason one picks everything off the floor before hoovering
• We should probably find a new cleaner
• I probably need new workout socks

Have you ever hoovered up a sock? Have you seen or owned a Henry before?  What the weirdest thing you've accidentally hoovered up?

Things that are working / things that are improving (part 2)

Hello from 12 days after my last post!

I can see I posted that at 6:40am on Saturday the 10th.  I was feeling somewhat tired from my ride, but I was also excited because I had booked a swim at a reservoir about 3 miles from my house.  The kids were all coming to meet me at a cafe after my dip, so I decided to run there for a bit of extra adventure.

I ran with a camelback carrying the minimum for the dip (jumper, swimsuit, travel towel, goggles, swim cap) and my back started to feel a bit... bad.  During my ride I felt I needed to stretch my back a lot but it's been a while since I've ridden that much and even longer since I've tried to do technical riding over drops

This is a drop. This is obvs not me.

The weather was lovely, the reservoir was a balmy 15c/60f. 

I did my swim and really felt like I needed to stretch my back when I got home because it felt... bad.  I claimed an hour of Rachel time over baby nap and tried to quick fix the situation with a bunch of Yoga classes.

Unfortunately by Monday my back was so sore I booked a half day of sick leave from work because I couldn't sit down for more than 10 minutes without shooting back pain.  I was mildly worried I had actually hurt my back in a very hurt way, but the NHS assured me that slipped disks and bulging disks and all of the back things I've heard of were just a normal part of owning a back.  And mostly, that if I had hurt my back there wasn't much to do besides rest.

And do a lot of yoga.  Every day.  (this was not really medical advice)

I started getting up at 5am to do a 30 or 45 minute Peloton yoga class every morning.  It was interesting because I have never struggled with standing forward fold before, and when I started this time I physically could not do the pose at all.  Same with other poses I normally like - happy baby, thread the needle... none of it.  I did yoga in the morning and the evening and noticed how much more flexible I was by the evening every day.  

After about 10 days the pain was gone, and yesterday I had a massage which helped immensely.  I am excited at the idea of continuing yoga though.  It's a nice way to get up in the morning.  Also, the terror that I won't be able to move without yoga was stronger than my desire to not be awake at 5am.

Things I learned:

• I am much happier now being a not-in-pain person
• Yoga is a really nice way to start the day
• Core muscles are very real and useful
• Recovering from a mild injury quickly is great for feeling much better about life
• Sleeping on my back sucks and is also really good for my back
• Mountain biking is great fun and probably worth 10 days of back pain but the run probably wasn't worth it

Do you do yoga (daily or otherwise)? Do you sleep on your back?  Can you do a standing forward fold?

Saturday - Things that are working, things that are improving

I had the most wonderful day mountain biking yesterday.  It took a lot to plan and it was a lot of fun.  I have exactly one photo of me eating a post ride hot dog.

During the biking we thought of loads of FLOM (or family meetings) worthy life updates which I didn't record very well.  And by the time it was bedtime I was so tired we didn't really cover any of the things.  but the takeaway was that Andy and I are both up for more adventure and are aware this will be a slow start due to the number and ages of kids we have.

Also, I would like to take a moment for things that are working right now, since I feel I've recently started using this blog for things that are not working.

Things that are working

Having a big car.  We have a S-Max 7 seater and it is great.  It's from 2017 and is the newest car we have ever owned

Our two day a week nanny who is starting 4 days a week.  She is lovely and so good with the kids and so incredibly calm as a human.  It's great for me to see what an inherently calm person is like because I am not that and I could definitely learn.

Our kid patio

Things that are improving

Not eating dinner with the kids all the time.  Sometimes meals are better when we sit for kid meal and then adult meal.  My new plan is Mon-Thurs we feed kids first, then Fri-Sun we eat all together.  We will see if this works, mostly it means I need to be less hungry at 5:30 kid meal.

Waking up early in the morning.  I am a morning person. I started being an evening person because mornings and baby wakeups were chaos, but they are not as chaos now, and kids are generally sleeping until 6:30 these days.  The problem is, it's hard to switch from being an evening person to a morning person.  It's very easy to stay up later and much harder to go to bed earlier (on a day by day basis).  I'm not planning on being a "in bed by 9 every day" person, but 9:30-5am is 7.5 hours of sleep and I do want to aim for that 3 or 4 days a week.

The weather.  I don't have any impact of this but OMG does it make a big difference

Is anything distinctly "working" or "improving" for you right now?

A failure to plan fun is a plan to fail at being fun?

Fun and Plans

Today Andy and I are going to our local Mountain Bike Trail Center together.  I worked from 7:00 to 9:30pm last night to try and get "caught up" for my day off which is super against my working ethos. I don't really have anything against working at night - I just don't like doing it because I seem to then stay up too late, which is exactly what happened yesterday and I don't think I fell asleep until 10:30. 

For the first time ever, I planned what routes we are going to do and now I'm even more excited.  I don't mean to be a loser here, but planning my fun was fun, and I think I will have more fun doing my fun now that it's planned. 

In case you're curious and want to see what MTB trails are called, the plan I made is as follows

Pedal to top of mountain
Funnel down
Pedal up
Poppity Ping Sessions to Terrys Belly
Uplift (a truck drives me and my bike up, yay)
Melted Welly to Off Grid to Forrest Bump to Kermit
Coffee and cake stop
Pedal up
Sixtapod to Merthyr Rocks
Uplift
????

I don't know if I can actually ride that much but we will see.  Slightly constrained by school times - we have less childcare on a friday - but maybe it's possible?

We were supposed to do this trip on Thursday a few weeks ago but Ezra was ill and I had to stay at home with him.  Andy starts a new job in June where he works on Fridays so this feels like a last chance adventure.  To make this work our nanny is watching the twins, and then my mom taking Ezra to school, and then my mom taking Lily to nursery (which starts at 1, and is right over twin nap, which is why nanny can't do the nursery drop off), and then my mom picking up both kids from school so we can do nanny twin handover, make dinner, and then collect bigger kids. I know it will be fun but there's a lot of logistics involved in a 7 hour escape.

Plans and unfun

Recently I feel I've been missing things that could be planned better.  Small and mostly insignificant things, but I know they all add to the mental load.  

For instance, breakfast is annoying.  Why do we have to do it every day?  We don't usually eat cereal because it doesn't seem super nutritious as compared to pancakes or eggs, but also... toast and peanut butter is nutritions.  And then we run out of toast.  And then... plans.  Blarg.

Lily only has two school summer dresses because I waited until after Easter to buy them and then only bought two because I feel we have too many clothes.  This may be the case, but now I have to do laundry daily until I can buy more and the local shops are out because who waits until it's 20 degrees to buy kids summer uniform? Me.

Not having nursery means our house is basically a childcare setting.  For example, our garden & patio:

This is fine, but means I cannot come downstairs and grab food when twins are awake and home.  Which means, I can eat between 10 and 11:30, and 1:30 and 2:30.  I am trying not to eat breakfast first thing, so recently I have a big meal at 10:30, but usually I try and squeeze in exercise during my lunch break which leaves me very very hungry at 3:30 and also least able to come get more food.  

I am a hungry human and need/want more than an apple or a snackbar at 3:30.

Yesterday my meals were a bit less than optimal

I just feel vaguely unsatisfied with how I'm currently eating - not from a nutrition standpoint - but from an enjoyment of food standpoint.  This could be fixable by planning.  It's just... a lot of planning.

Do you plan your fun? Are you in a meal rut? Can you come make me lunches please?  Or, come mountain biking with me?

Photo Dump Confessional: A blog post in 5 photos (or 6)

I got behind in my photo albums.

I generally update these monthly.  It take 1 to 1.5 hours a month.  I do a family album, and then a small album for each kid.

I did my February updates on 31st March.  I actually only ordered the 2023 album in March as well, because there was a sale, and because I finally decided I wasn't going to proofread it at all or check for errors.  I definitely missed adding labels to some months. Oops.

I start every year album with a photo of each room of our house.  I had forgotten to take photos in January, so took them in March.  Oops.  I still need to add them to 2024.

This morning I uploaded all March and April photos to snapfish.  I also haven't done well about clearing out my iphone photos. I don't like using infinite storage, but it seems like that's what's happening.  At least I can get rid of QR codes and random photos of returns.  

Some photos were clearly meant for blog posts... and since I don't think I'll manage a good post anytime soon here's a short post in 5 photos.

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While packing for Sweden we got our our luggage for the first time in 5+ years.  Here is a suitcase we used to move to the UK in 2016.  

After pulling our luggage out of eaves storage eaves storage I decided we don't need to hold onto giant suitcases anymore. This one is a late 90s jansport.  We got it for free.  I think it has made a final voyage.

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Sweden was a great adventure BUT it's amazing how easy it is to get out of exercise routine.  I wasn't feeling well between the 26th and 29th and then Sweden was 23rd to 29th and then... it was easy to not start again.  

I guess this is the tricky thing with habits.  Days formerly didn't feel right unless I did exercise.  It started to feel really optional when I didn't do it.

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When in sweden we went to a toy store to look at toys.  Lily really wanted this toy. Why does a baby need a moped?

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When we first bought our house we thought it had a great garden because it has a pretty big garden (by UK standards.  Also, I mean "lawn" or "backyard".  Except I feel it has a small lawn and a small backyard... so maybe that's why we say "Garden")

It turns out, gardens that are above the level of the house kind of suck for kids.  I got tired of the continued terror of the kids accessing the garden steps and falling off onto paving stones and bought a baby gate which we put outside.  I know this gate will get ruined in a year, but also I hope we won't need it for more than a year.  It's nice that the toddlers can now toddle around outside without me standing in front of these stairs.

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Finally, it's light outside now.  This is the train station on my return from a work trip to London. It's 9pm.  It's dusk.  It's nice to be able to stay outside later.  I don't really need it to be light later (this will be about 10:30pm in late June) but right now I'm super cool with a 9pm light sky.

Post where I complain about having too much stuff and end with a paragraph on acquiring more stuff.

Right now I am feeling like there isn't enough time.  This is not the "May-cember" chaos I read about - I don't feel like school or life is ramping up - I just feel like life *is* ramped.  I try to make a list of what I feel needs to be done to feel less behind and I end up with "laundry" and "sort house".  Neither of these things is a real thing, because you are never done with laundry, and what does "sort house" even mean?  And still, I feel vaguely dissatisfied with many of my home spaces right now.

I am not good at making a home look pretty.  I am good at making a home look tidy.  Right now, we have too much stuff.  We are in a stuff phase of kids, and it shows, but I feel there is just stuff everywhere.

In my little dream head I want to spend 2 days just going through everything in my house and getting rid of things and moving things and putting things away.  BUT if was given 2 days to do anything I want there is no way I would want to spend it doing that, because it's really not a great way to spend valuable free time.  So, the clutter and chaos persists for now.

Speaking of not enough time - Andy and I went on a out of the house date night! We always go to the same bottle shop and get pizza delivered from the pizza place next door and it's great.  We met the owner of this bottle shop on a cross country trip in the USA in 2014.  

Because we are still young at heart we rode bikes to our date night.  On the ride home I saw a free bike outside someone's house and noticed it was actually a really nice free bike! So we decided to take it home.  This was a bit tricky because it's hard to carry a bike home on a bike.  Andy made a
good effort.

We ended up dropping the bike off at a friends house, and will come pick it up in the car soon.  Also a great way to end a date night - surprise hang out with a friend - he thought scavenging for bikes wat not the typical date.  He gave Andy a beer though, and I still had some of my wine left (not pictured, me carrying a half bottle of wine home on the back of my bike), so we had one more drink before heading home.

One of my May goals is to make our outdoor space more fun and appealing.  Today I am picking up some more garden things to make the garden more fun and inviting.  Last year we had the coldest and wettest April on record.  This year we had the hottest April on record.  So far, we have. had three days of pleasant May.  Fingers crossed outdoor life continues!

Do you feel may-cember? Do you ever feel mildly unsatisfied with spaces in your home, or is there one space that gives you more trouble than the rest?