First Friday Five

I love lists. Preferably lists with little checkboxes next to them. I can often be found adding an item to a list just to be able to check it off. What, you don’t do that too? Just me then?  Be thankful that all my posts aren’t just lists with little checkboxes.

I was inspired by my buddy Courtney from Eat Pray Run, DC and her Friday 5 lists, and since she’s been doing a Friday linkup I thought I’d go for the list post today. It’s as if she created this linkup just for moi so that I can find other list-loving people… Sigh, I’ll dream of lists tonight. It would sure beat my Walking-Dead-esque zombie nightmares that I have sometimes. Unless my dream will include a list-eating zombie.

Okay, well back to business: here’s my first Friday Five, a totally random assortment of things from my week:

[cue the drumroll…]

1. Some restaurants are amazing and really care.

I’ve mentioned before that my youngest has food allergies, so we rarely go out to eat and when we do we bring food for him. Our lives are filled with constant fear and stress over his potential anaphylaxis, and avoiding sunflower, peanuts, and tree nuts at all costs.

We read recommendations for Not Your Average Joe’s, a small chain of restaurants in MA, MD, & VA, and how conscientious they are about food allergies., so we decided to try the one near us – and they exceeded our expectations. We had a personal visit from the manager and the chef before the food came to understand his allergies and explain how they were going to keep him safe. Then another visit (or two) from the manager and chef after the food came to check in and make sure we were comfortable. And the food was delicious, we all loved our meals! So for anyone with food allergies – or without! – we say GO to Not Your Average Joe’s, they are awesome.

2. Running with an almost-4-year-old is harder work than running with a 1-year-old.

Duh. On Sunday, I had to work an outdoor rehearsal and concert in the heat for 8-9 hours all afternoon and evening, but I needed to get in a run. I wanted to run with the 1-year-old in the stroller, but he was happy playing with his big sister, so I succumbed to the middle child’s begging and let him hop in.

It was hot. He was heavy. It was a great upper body workout in addition to the running.

And when we returned, a very jealous 1 year old freaked out when he saw his brother in the stroller, and wanted his turn. Sorry, mommy is overheated. Can you spot the jealous Great Dane in the picture?

3. Doing a triathlon means Cynthia buys lots of stuff.

I know I don’t need every little thing out there, but after the Duathlon, I vowed I’d get those no-tie laces to speed up my transitions. I finally tried the Xtenex laces I bought at a store recently on the run I mentioned in #2. I’ve now used them twice and the jury is still out since they bother the top of my foot. I know I can survive in them for a 2.5 mile run at the tri so I’m going to use them this weekend and then play around with the tension when I run next week.

4. Losing more weight means nothing fits.

Of course this is a good problem to have, but seriously – one week before the triathlon and my sports bra doesn’t fit? Yikes! I took my daughter to Fleet Feet Sports and she got an education in bra fitting, lucky her. Hopefully she doesn’t need to worry about that for several more years, but it was fun to have her along. Another weird thing I discovered is that somehow I’ve turned into a size Small in Nike clothes – how the heck did that happen?! I’ve never been a small so maybe they are being generous with their sizing these days.

5. I’m writing this list instead of packing for my triathlon.

Yep.

Tomorrow morning I leave for Iron Girl Rocky Gap.  I’m a little anxious and a lot excited. I really should get back to obsessing over my triathlon packing list and throw in a load of laundry.  And then I’ll add “LAUNDRY” to my To Do List and check it right off.  CHECK!

Are you a list lover too?

Was it 24 laps or lengths? Ah, who cares, I did 24 of them!

Last night I was determined to get to the pool to do some laps. Determined! I had the will but not the way (aka the time). Isn’t that old phrase: “where there’s a will there’s a way”? Well, sometimes there just isn’t a way, like when you have 3 kids and have to: drop a car at the shop, wrap presents, take kids to a cousin’s birthday party, pack separate food for your food-allergic child to eat at the party, put the 1yo down for a nap, take the 7yo to a swimming party, make dinner, pick up the car from the shop, do laundry since the 3yo is out of underwear, put the kids to bed, and stop off at the wine store because we have a winemergency.

And when we are out of wine, it is truly a winemergency because how can you handle a Saturday like that if you don’t have wine to look forward to at the end of it?

Once upon a time I had Saturdays that were relaxing. Ah, those were the days…

So I put the 18 month old to bed and my up-for-anything au pair and I decided to hit the neighborhood pool to do laps. My husband handled the not-happy-about-it 3.5 year old, and we quietly snuck out. 

Brrr… the water felt pretty chilly and I was a total wuss getting in the pool like the older women I used to make fun of as a kid at the pool, until I realized – Oh wait! I am one of those older ladies now, OMG!!! – and jumped right in. Defy the old lady stereotype!

Once I got going the water felt GREAT! I, however, started to feel like I had a lot of work to do to build up my endurance and work on my form for the triathlon. I swam 3 freestyle/1 breaststroke lengths (or laps? Weigh in below!) a few times and thought I just might be done now. So I rested on the side of the pool and decided to work on my form and get into a better groove. And when I started back up, it felt better and better each length. In fact, I could have kept going, except the lifeguards were hating us by that point – it was 9pm and the pool was closing.

I ended up doing 24 lengths, and although I know I have a lot to work on in the next 3 months, I’m feeling pretty good about my first pool training session of the official Triathlon training.

After spending my entire childhood practically living at the pool every summer, on the swim team and later as a lifeguard, I’m now perplexed by the length vs. lap distinction. I’m sure now that a lap = there & back, but that means my entire childhood memories are wrong. Ack, I’m not sure I can handle this mental mind game – my mind is blown.

Do you call them lengths or laps?

 

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Margarita Run

It’s been a busy week here in MV-land! After working three straight nights at an outdoor concert, finally, at long last, Monday was a day off. Hooray, an actual whole day off full of fun festive frolicking with family! (Okay, yes, I got a little over-zealous with the alliteration. But I can’t promise it won’t happen again…).

Since we are still minivan-free in our house of 3 adults + 3 kids, we have to take two cars everywhere. Stick with me, this comes into play later. Our fun day involved a BBQ at my brother’s house. I was a little worn out from going to bed after 1:30am, only to be woken up by the toddler at 6am, but I got my act together and threw on my exercise clothes. I can barely fit in exercise during the week so there was no excuse to avoid a workout on a full day off!

My sister-in-law has recently started running, so we had an idea to go for a run together for the first time! I drove to their house with my 17-month old (F.) & the running stroller in tow, ahead of the rest of my family. We ran a 5K route around her pretty neighborhood, dubbing it the Margarita Run. The idea was not super-crazy-buffing-ourselves-up-workout, but enough calorie burning to have a guilt-free margarita.

Loved the run – good company, good conversation, the fun of motivating each other to workout. I instantly felt LESS tired than I had felt all morning, despite my lack of sleep. And I felt equipped to have a margarita guilt-free!

The BBQ was nice and relaxing – kids playing, adults talking, everyone eating and drinking. It was our first gathering trying to manage F’s food allergies since we found out about the peanut allergy (we knew about sunflower). We were all really careful, checking labels and communicating about what he could and couldn’t eat. I had packed food for him that we supplemented with other supposedly safe foods added in. But then…

Well, I’ll just sum up the end of Monday with these two words and you can only guess how much fun we had Monday night:

*EPIPEN + ER*

I’ll spare you the details, but yes, it sucked. For a while it was like a scene out of  a bad movie – strapping F into the car seat and realizing our other kids were climbing in and buckling up. “You’re not coming with us, out of the car!!!” Thankfully, our au pair took the big kids home in one car so we could both go to the ER with him in the other. Of course then we got into holiday traffic on the highway and had to zoom down the shoulder with our hazards on, with me squeezing my eyes shut as my husband drove. Yes, we know now: call 911 and don’t try to race there yourself.

The cutie is doing just fine now.

I’ve been filling my limited computer time this week with more peanut and sunflower allergy research, calling companies to check about cross-contamination risks of various things he was eating that day, checking on things and regularly eats, and basically just stressing.

I have to say, that Margarita Run was perfect! It definitely helped me physically as well as mentally to handle the tough evening ahead. I think my evening workouts are becoming more and more unreliable and the benefits of a morning workout are adding up. As I embark on the Triathlon training (I start on Monday!), I am going to try to do it all early mornings to start the day out with the workout.

When is your best time of day to work out?

The peanut is neither a pea nor a nut. Discuss.

“The peanut is neither a pea nor a nut. Discuss.”
– Linda Richman (aka Mike Myers, Coffee Talk, Saturday Night Live)

http://www.hulu.com/watch/4118

I’ve set aside my triathlon and road bike research this week since I’ve been consumed with food allergy research (I’ve mentioned my tendency to get obsessive about researching things!). We had an Allergy Action Plan appointment for my 16-month old, along with Epi-Pen training.The peanut allergy is some scary stuff.

Wait – don’t suggest Sunbutter – along with the positive test for peanuts, he’s also positive for sunflower. Yes, sunflower oil. Sunflower oil is in so many things, we’ve been avoiding it for months and you would be surprised where it’s lurking.

How did we find this out?

When he first started eating solid foods, he would develop a very distinct rash on his cheek. We tried to pin it down to a particular food (at one point we thought he was allergic to carrots!) but couldn’t figure it out, it was really confusing.

Then one traumatic day in December, he woke up at about 11pm screaming. Mr. Happiest Baby On Earth – the best sleeper in the world, was screaming in his crib!

Seriously, if there were a Baby Sleeping Convention, he’d be the Keynote Speaker.

This was not like him, at ALL. So I changed his diaper and saw crazy red areas all over his legs, with white raised welts. It got worse and spread onto his trunk as I threw on clothes to rush him to the ER. He had hives all over his body that were getting worse and worse, and his eye was swollen. In the car he started a scary coughing sound – I was freaking out: “DON’T DIE IN THE CAR ON THE WAY TO THE ER!!!”

Thankfully, at the ER he responded well to the Benadryl. The doc said that hives could be caused by a virus or be an allergic reaction. I took some photos of the hives – here is one but it does NOT do the in-person efffect justice, it looked much worse!

I had brought the container of the only thing new he had eated: Plumazins, which were diced plums in sunflower oil that I had bought to put in oatmeal. Thinking it was the likely culprit, I made an allergist appointment and we avoided sunflower oil.

A few days later we did some accidental “allergy testing” when he ate an organic fruit bar that had sunflower oil that we had in the diaper bag – we realized the ingredients contained sunflower when we saw hives developing all over his body. Benadryl to the rescue again and he was good as new.

The allergist said we had to wait a while to do the scratch test, but when we did it was negative for sunflower oil. Stumped, we received an order for a blood test.

Recently, I was just about to take him for the blood test when he was fed Peanut Butter Panda Puffs and had an immediate rash/hives reaction. YIKES! So the allergist had me add peanuts to the blood test and yep – allergic! Low level sunflower allergy too, so she thought the other times might have been peanut cross-contamination if not sunflower.

So now we’re armed with Epi-Pen Jr. and are practicing with the “trainer” pen.

Just when I think we’ve tossed everything peanutty out of our pantry, I come across something else in the house that needs to go, and tonight I realized the dog’s Kong has old peanut butter remnants. I need to do a thorough cleaning out and re-check before we declare it safe for him to eat anything in the house.

He’s only 16 months old so he can’t talk yet to tell us that something is wrong – and he still eats anything he finds on the floor! – so we’re trying to be super careful.

Do you have any experience with food allergies? Any tips for parents of a toddler with a newly diagnosed peanut allergy?

How Many Calories Does Coughing Burn?

It always happens. I finish a big event for work, a big international business trip, or a big race and BAM – I get sick. Finished all the training and ran the Nike Women’s Half Marathon on Sunday → cue the germs invading.

<cough, cough, wheeze, wheeze, sniffle, sniffle >

Sorry, I had to pause typing to cough up a lung.

I had a post-race workout plan this week – REALLY! – to go for a short run, hit the gym, and get to the pool for my first triathlon training swim. But my body had other plans. I started to feel pretty bad at work Tuesday (it didn’t help that I didn’t get home until 10pm due to an evening event), and woke up yesterday morning feeling awful.

I took my daughter to a doctor’s appointment only to find out it was canceled. Apparently they had left a message at 4pm the day before but I was at work until late at night. That’s not very much notice, anyhow! And it was with a specialist that is really hard to schedule with, adding more complications to my crazy May schedule.

And then the allergy doc called to confirm that my 16 month old definitely has that suspected peanut allergy, along with a low-level sunflower allergy to boot (we’ve known about that one for months). So I dragged myself from my bed to throw some things out from our pantry. My daughter has to say goodbye to her favorite sandwich: peanut butter, ham, & honey (yes, really!).

After that, I felt done. Done, done, done. It was not a great day to miss a day of work (is it ever in the arts?), so today, I dragged my coughing self in there to do two days’ work in one day.

So basically: feeling sick and run down + no workouts this week = irritated. So far, the only bright spots this week have been:

Bright Spot #1: Today I was down another pound. Maybe all that coughing was burning some calories. Only 5 pounds to go to reach my first goal weight, the technical top of my BMI range. See ya, baby weight, don’t let the door hit you on the way out!

Bright Spot #2: My 16 month old has started saying a few words! He’s been doing a little sign language for a while, but all of a sudden this week he’s uttering words (well, YOU might not think they were words if you heard him, but WE understand what he’s saying). Totally scrumptiously, deliciously cute.

Bright Spot #3: Time resting in bed yesterday gave me time to research triathlon training plans and read my new book, Triathlon for the Every Woman by Swim Bike Mom. So I’m motivated and ready to get started!

Any recommendations for a sprint triathlon training plan for a busy working mom? Any good tips for squeezing the training into crazy work weeks?