Tuesday Afternoon Misadventures in Running

I have posted about my attempt to regain something that resembles health before here so today was a beautiful day and that meant I should go for a run. The Mr. has started a new job that starts anywhere from 1pm-6pm and then ends anywhere from 11pm-2am which has basically turned me into the only parent Monday through Friday as well as the only animal caregiver for the week as well.  Babci is home from her European adventures but it was never our goal to interrupt her life or ask her to take over jobs we would be doing anyway so I’ve been dealing with a lot of the everyday details which leads me to today’s misadventures.

Part of having dogs is walking them.  I used to walk/run with the dogs almost daily because they were so high energy that walking or running was the only way to keep them (and thus me) sane; now the dogs are 10 and 8 years old, still in good health but their age is starting to show so the daily excursions for exercise has decreased in need since they’ve become almost normal.  However when I do go out, especially on beautiful days like it was this afternoon, I like to take the

dogs.  This does make for an interesting set up, I’ve got a 16 month old wiggly toddler in the stroller and then two dog leashes clipped to either side of the stroller.  Water, keys and cell phone are in the stroller and I am running/walking (using this 5K Runner App based on the couch to 5K program) pushing a stroller, trying to interact with the toddler because she hasn’t seen me all day, and then managing 2 dog leashes.  This has lead to a few things of note today:

1. The dogs are so interested in meeting other dogs that it is an arm workout keeping the stroller, dogs, and me from going flying.
   
2. The Munchkin has become so squirmy that if she isn’t strapped in she decides it’s fun to turn around and stand up to stare at mommy.
   
3. The Munchkin also discovered that she could close her Camelbak water bottle but not open it so she spent many minutes closing it and then handing it to me to open it just so she could close it again (or I’m a sucker and she really can open it but the jury is still out on that one).  While this is fun to learn a new things and I’m all for practicing motor skills but see #1 and constantly having to close a water bottle makes it difficult.  Of course if we stopped playing this game the Munchkin started to scream bloody murder and other pedestrians wondered what I was doing to my child.
4. I got new headphones at a recent running sale and found out I can take pictures using the headphone controls so I took many pictures of the inside of the stroller pouch.  As a sidenote, I need to figure out how to use these Yurbuds.
   
5. I have finally realized I can listen to my cues/music in the aforementioned headphones.  Before one of my hang-ups was that I couldn’t listen to anything because I was supposed to be interacting, talking, etc…to the Munchkin.  I don’t have a lot of mom guilt but it seems to show up in very random places.
6. Even with all the imperfect-ness of it, I still at least got out there, enjoyed the weather and was able to rack up some calorie burn and movement.

Once we got home I made dinner and with my experiment at batch cooking yesterday it was really easy and took me about 15 minutes to put Butter Chicken and Rice together (with some brussel sprouts…don’t ask why these were added to Indian food) for dinner which the Munchkin kind of happily ate.  She’s got four teeth pushing their way up right now so she’s as happy as anyone would be with four spiky protrusions trying to assault their way up through sensitive gums.

Since it was about 6:00pm when dinner was finished, we started the bedtime routine and after her book she went happily to sleep even with the windows open and the A/C off she’s sleeping like a rockstar.  I’m hoping I can join her when I’m finished all my adulting (and TV) that waits until she’s in dreamland