Blankies & Booboos

So long, farewell, auf wienerschnitzel, goodbye…

I have had a hard time writing this post.

It’s been in my head for a year. I have put it off, and put it off, and put it off. But the time has come to take action.

I’m shutting down Blankies & Booboos. It’s been a labor of love for me for five happy years now. And I hate to see it go away.

But.

I have been thinking a lot lately about my kids and their privacy. Alissa was a baby when I first started blogging here. Now she is in grade school and Ashley is in preschool. I love sharing their stories, but as they get older I hesitate to put too much about them out there. I never, ever want them to be embarrassed or feel I have exposed too much of their privacy by sharing things about them with people they don’t know.

We are still very much in the era of blankies and booboos around here. Both my girls love their blankies and Ashley is always covered in band-aids for her booboos, both real and imaginary. Yet I see us slowly moving into the next stage of our lives. While this blog hasn’t yet outlived its purpose, it may soon.

Don’t despair (or rejoice!) about my absence just yet. I have a new blog project in the works that will debut soon. Over the past year I have blogged frequently about my struggles with weight and my challenges with getting healthy. My new blog will include stories from my personal journey, as well as posts about fitness, food, health news, and anything else that might sound interesting. I hope you’ll follow me on the new blog once I get up and running.

I have appreciated all your comments, support, and participation in my giveaways. There were days when my girls were tiny that blogging here kept me from losing my mind. It has been comforting to know that many of you have struggled with the same parenting & life conundrums that I have struggled with over the past few years.

Thanks for everything over the past five years. It’s meant the world to me.

~Amy

April 14, 2013 at 9:24 am 1 comment

What is going ON here?

Something unusual has happened at my house this week.

Something much-needed.

Something very welcome.

For the first time in I-don’t-know-how-long, I have slept seven consecutive hours. And not just one, but TWO nights IN A ROW.

Somebody please – break out the band. And the parade. For this is a ticker-tape sort of moment.

I’ve written about it here before. In fact, the last time I wrote about my battle with Mr. Insomnia was in 2011. Hadn’t improved since then. In fact, if anything it was worse.

And I was miserable. Tired all day. Frustrated at night, watching the hours roll by on the clock. 2:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m. – I despise those a.m.’s.

There’s a reason why they use sleep deprivation as a method of torture.

I would blame it on the kids, and it WAS their fault for quite some time. Ashley still gets up in the middle of the night from time, coming in to find me for some midnight comfort. But for the most part, the lack of sleep is all me. I have to pee. My brain is racing. My legs are restless. I am hot.

If this is an indication of what menopause is going to be like someday – well, then, forget that noise. I’ll just stay fertile until I’m 80, thank you.

A few more nights like this, and maybe I’ll conquer the world.

March 16, 2013 at 6:12 am Leave a comment

Training’s not going quite like I had planned.

One of my goals for the year is to run a half-marathon. So on February 2nd, I hit “submit” on my registration for the Prairie Fire Half Marathon, scheduled for May 5th. I had already started training; the weekend before, in fact, I had done five miles. My training plan was set and calendared. I was confident, I was determined, I was going to DO THIS.

On February 8th, I fell down the stairs.

And it wasn’t some minor stumble, where I caught my toe and righted myself just in time. No, I completely missed the step and – wheeeee! – flew right past it, directly onto the garage floor.

I fell with all the grace and velocity of a baby rhino learning to walk.

Immediate pain, fire, and brimstone began to pulsate through my right ankle. This is what I get for attempting to talk and walk down the stairs at the same time. I know what my capabilities are, and evidently accomplishing those two minor tasks simultaneously are not among them.

Oh, and these were my in-laws’ stairs I fell down. Alissa was staying with my mother-in-law for the morning, because school was out for parent-teacher conferences. I had merely run by to pick Alissa up from school; we were leaving the house to get Ashley from her school.

All I had to do was navigate three steps out from the house to the garage.

As I lay on the garage floor, assessing the damage and thinking about how I REALLY needed to get my work pants dry cleaned now, my mother-in-law went in to call Brad. He would come get me and take me to the doctor. Meanwhile, she would collect Ashley from school for me.

I managed to crawl into the house and drag myself to the couch, convinced I had broken something.

Turns out, nothing was broken. Just a mild sprain. The swelling subsided after a week. The bruising is finally starting to fade.

The half-marathon training, however, has been nagging at me. It’s been two weeks since my little accident, and I haven’t run a step. I needed to get back out there, take my ankle for a spin.

I told Brad I was going to run. “I think you should wait another week,” he said. I told my sister-in-law I needed to get back out there. “Maybe you should give it more time,” she suggested.

“Pish,” I sniffed. “Posh,” I scoffed. I’m made of stronger stuff than this. I need to get back to training.

Yesterday I hit the track at the Y.

After 1.5 miles of WALKING, I had to admit:

It was too soon.

Pain was radiating across the top of my foot and into the bottom of my leg. I resorted to the bicycle, where I seethed. Anger fueled my 30-minute ride.

I was angry at myself for my carelessness. For not paying attention.

I was angry at the situation. Here I had finally committed to doing this, and I’m sidelined with injury. I was angry that I spent $53 and I’m not sure I’ll be ready for this event.

Sure, I still have 2+ months to train. Sure, I can always stop and walk if I need to. Thing is, my confidence level was high before because I was allowing myself plenty of time for training. As a fluffy non-runner, lots of training time was very important to me.

Still, frustration was creating anger in me. I was letting my circumstances dictate my attitude.

In the middle of the night, as I tried to go back to sleep after getting up with Ashley, I realized something: I was putting too much pressure on myself.

As usual.

Running a half-marathon is a great goal. But it shouldn’t be stressing me out. It’s not like this is the ONLY ONE I’ll ever have the chance to do. And I *can* always walk part of it and I *DO* still have 10 weeks to train.

In the middle of the night, I decided to start dictating my attitude. I’m not going to let my little date with gravity drag me down.

Cheers to everyone who is out running this morning. I’ll be joining you soon.

February 23, 2013 at 8:21 am Leave a comment

Read this book!

Andy Barber is 1st Assistant District Attorney in the affluent Massachusetts town of Newton, a suburb that is rocked when a fourteen-year-old middle school boy is found stabbed to death in the local park. Andy’s instincts point him the direction of local child-groper Leonard Patz as the killer. He is pursuing that lead when he is stunned by news from his office: Andy’s own fourteen-year-old son, Jacob, is accused of committing the murder.

Did Jacob do it? Andy tells us over and over that he is convinced of Jacob’s innocence. Yet Andy has carried around secrets for decades, secrets that may plant a seed of doubt and hinder the acquittal of his son.

Part murder mystery, part psychological exploration, Defending Jacob explores the unraveling of a family as they face devastating truth head-on. The story is told through flashbacks, bookended by Andy’s testimony during a deposition before a grand jury.

Author William Landay’s style reminds me of John Grisham’s best writing, with a touch of Jodi Picoult-ish storytelling thrown in. (However, Landay’s style has much less handwringing and overtelling than Picoult’s latest books.) I could not put this book down once I started reading it. I highly recommend!

View it on Amazon.

February 15, 2013 at 2:14 pm Leave a comment

What’s playing in Amy’s ear?

A friend of mine was recently looking for workout song suggestions, and I realized I haven’t done a post like this in over a year! I’ve added a lot of new songs to my playlist since then.

Here’s what I’m listening to on my runs these days. If I seem to have a weird and disparate collection of songs…well, I do.

(Click the song title to go to the Amazon page for a music preview.)