Obstacle(s) of the Day

This morning, as luck would have it -- or maybe more like Murphy's Law -- I woke up sick. Not terribly sick, but enough that my lymphnodes are pretty swollen and uncomfortable. And enough to know that today is not a great day to work out.

Obstacle Number Two turned out to be the fact that She Who Must Not Sleep has found a way to defy our newfound car-ride process for getting her to doze off for us. Instead of fighting us tooth and nail all night, she dozed off in the car, just like magic, and then THREE THIRTY AM, she woke up. Fortunately, I didn't hear anything until 4:30, but what I woke up to was her babbling away... in the living room, not over the monitor. I thought that was a little odd, and then I rolled over to see what the hubby thought about it, and realized he was gone. I rolled out of bed in my usual zombie fashion, tromped into the living room, to find my daughter happily waving away at me, as if it was 2pm in the afternoon.

"What are you doing?"

He looked at me like I was an idiot, and said, "We're playing. Can't you see that?"

So I took over so he could get some sleep. In the end, thank God she was snotty, because that let me not feel bad about drugging her up with benedryl. She even slept in until almost 9am.

Everyone says, "Oh, she needs to be on a SCHEDULE. ROUTINE is the KEY!" They say this like it's some sort of ancient guru-like piece of advice, the keystone of all good mothering and bedtime magic. Even my mother said it, including details of how it was all supposed to go down. Bath, pajamas, a little reading, rocking and a bottle.

Problem was, we had done all of that. In fact, it had been working like a charm for several weeks. We honestly don't know what happened, outside of the fact that our daughter threw us a curve ball, and we didn't really recover from it. So we instituted the car ride. It was like magic. Pop her in, and out she went. It was amazing!

So when my hubby went out of town, and my parents came in to help me out -- since I was completely losing my mind with the sleep problems, and we had only figured it out the night before -- I left Grammy and Grandad to take care of the bedtime routine.

"Oh we'll be fine," mom told me. "We'll give her a bath, and we'll rock, and we'll have some milk, and it'll be great! She'll be out by the time you get home!"

Dad looks at me and says gruffly, "We got this under control. Get outta here."

When I got back to the house a little while later, I come in and find mom sitting on the couch with the Energizer Bunny I spawned, wide awake, of course.

"I take it you didn't take her on a car ride, huh?" I said.

Mom looks at me, bleary-eyed -- her bedtime is normally 8pm or earlier, and it was now getting close to 10pm -- and says, "Nevermind what I said! You're doing the best you can with her!"

So anyway, I woke up late for the Step Aerobics Class, which I guess is okay, considering how I'm feeling. But I did ride the recumbent bike for a little while, and then the elliptical.

The up-shot to today is, my scales say I've lost five pounds since Thursday. This is the most I've lost without pharmaceutical assistance since last October. Not only that, but I feel like I look better, too. Like my shirt is starting to fit me the way it used to. So today, I may be going off the diet so that my body devote some energy to recovering, but tomorrow or the day after, it's definitely back on. Maybe with a little modification for my workouts, but it's definitely back on.