First 5K EVER!

This week has been very challenging for me.  I'm still trying to process the news that I have an autoimmune disease and that I'm looking at a drastic diet change in the hopes of either maintaining a certain level of thyroid medicine or being able to go off of it entirely.  With the diagnosis of Hashimoto's disease I can look back at my past medical history and or how I've exercised and dieted in the past and so much more of this all makes sense.  I wonder what measure of my past bouts of depression can be attributed to the Hashimoto's.  There is still a lot to read and a plan of action to come up with.  I know that at the very least I'll be kissing gluten goodbye.  I'm enjoying this last weekend with one of the great loves of my life, Guinness, before I say adios forever.

All that being said, I RAN my first 5K ever today.  Once before in my life I did a 5K distance on a treadmill but I couldn't walk later that day and I've never run with much consistency until the last three months.  Yeah, I kicked the 5K's butt!  I averaged a better pace then ever before 13.23 mins/mile and I didn't take ANY walking breaks.  My finishing time was 41.31 minutes.  Having my older brother and best friend there running on either side of me helped me push through the walls, the heart palpitations and tingling hands. (Thanks Hashimoto's.)  The last mile actually really challenged me and I kept thinking, "I'm not going to let Daniel and the kids down.  They are waiting to cheer for me."  Then that last 1/4 mile my thought was, "I'm not going to let MYSELF down, I'm going to run, I'm going to train to run farther distances, and this f*****g Hashimoto's isn't going to get the best of me.  I'm going to get better."  So I finished and I finished speeding up and it was awesome to see my husband and kids there supporting me and hear everyone cheering and clapping.

When we got home it occurred to me that I haven't gone back and looked at the pictures Aiden took of me three months ago when I started this fitness journey and the journey to real health.  Wanna see the before pictures?  This was a good moment for me, I've come a LONG way!

Quick Update

I was looking at some old pictures and this is from last summer.  I miss my sweet girls long hair and pigtails!

The last couple of weeks have been busy as usual.  I've had a lot more ups and downs as far as my mood goes so my doctor upped my medication.  We'll see how it goes, I was totally wiped out yesterday but that could be from any number of things.

Smallest of All is mobile, I can't believe she's 9 months old!  She'll get up on all fours and rock and she is a pro at low crawling like a soldier avoiding enemy fire.  The middle child turned 3 about 10 days ago, I cannot believe how time is flying by.

I've hit a weight loss plateau.  At my weigh in last Saturday I hadn't lost any that week and the week before I only lost half a pound.  I need to reevaluate my plan and start consistently adding in strength training to the cardio work outs.

There is a lot going on in my head about how I think I want to organize and keep up with my blog.  I really want to see this journey through to its end and be an encouragement to all the other crazy busy mommies out there.  Somehow I want to figure out how to have tabs so I can have section for weight loss, parenting, homeschooling, etc...

Gotta get my little screamer down for a nap.  She keeps going for the dog's bone and the dog keeps following her around looking for spit-up...

Juggling Chain Saws

I once gave a friend a card that said:

"Any idiot can juggle chain saws, it's the day to day balloon making that wears you out." ~Anton the Clown

There are many days when I feel like poor ol' Anton. Staying home with my kids so often can seem like balloon making, nothing ever changes. I referee the same fights, fix the same dino nuggets (what part of a chicken looks like a T-rex anyway?), change the same diapers, read the same books, wash the same dishes and then I wake up the next day and, TA DA, repeat. Again. Where is the joy in that? Up until about 6 weeks ago, there wasn't much.

Unlike my name, most of my life I have not felt very joyful. Depression started as a teenager/preteen and went undiagnosed. I had glimmers and moments of happiness but overall I felt sad, flat, uninteresting, uninterested and lonely. It wasn't until our oldest was 1 1/2 that I was actually diagnosed and put on medication. That plus therapy and things were better, for awhile. I went off medication when we wanted baby number two and in the four years since then there has been a gradual decline back into the great hole that depression feels like. About 6 weeks ago now I was at our doctors office for the baby's 4 month check up. When the doctor asked me how I was doing I nearly burst into tears. I made an appointment for a couple of days later and had another stare down with the hush hush word, depression.

Simply admitting to what I had known helped and I left the doctor, prescription in hand, and felt optimistic. I know that a little blue pill doesn't fix everything, not nearly, but it removes a road block to me finding myself again. In the first week after that appointment I laughed, and I mean I really laughed, for the first time in ages. (It's hard not to when a 5 year old gets a bag of dog poop stuck in a tree but that's another story.) I started to see the beauty in the world again. The mess in the house actually started to bother me. I realized what a disservice I was doing to my kids but just yelling at them and not parenting them. I was failing in "training them in the way they should go." I realized I had completely shut myself off from my husband and from God.

My days are still incredibly busy, simply making sure three kids are fed and reasonably clean is a full time job in itself! The difference is me, it's my heart, there is joy in it again. I laugh, I love stopping and seeing the world through my kids eyes, I love teaching my children. I miss my husband deeply when he is gone now and just sitting by him on the couch is a treat, something I don't take for granted anymore.

Maybe this post is a little deep but it is the pivotal event that brought me to even writing this blog. It's my life and it's really beautiful.