I thought a lot about my life while I was walking for hours and hours at a time in the cold Himalayan mountains (what else is one to do?). There are a few different things that I’m still digesting, but mostly, I’m really happy with my life. With myself. Which is a pretty rad feeling.

Physically, I’m happy with my fitness level. I’ll up it a bit this summer as I train for a marathon and attempt to keep lifting weights (I have historically had trouble balancing both things at the same time) (see also my new page up above, I’ll be updating it monthly with my schedule, my totals and my weight lifting progress).

Mentally, I’m happy with how I feel about myself. Sure, there are parts of my body that I’m still not 100% happy with, but the most important thing is that my body does what I ask of it. I fuel it well and push it hard and I rest when I need to rest and sometimes indulge in a big bucket of movie popcorn or a few too many beer and basically, we’ve got a good equilibrium going on. And that feeling of balance has let me abandon some self-consciousness that plagued me in the past.

Being away from the kids wasn’t as hard as I expected. I turned off, emotionally, which I wasn’t even sure that I knew how to do before this trip, to tell you the truth (on the other hand, I cried at a drop of a hat for the first two days I was home). But it did give me time to reflect on how I’ve been mothering them.

At one point, as we turned around and started to walk away from Base Camp, my brother told me that this was one of the greatest things he had ever done. And at the risk of being the biggest cliche imaginable, my first thought was that my two greatest accomplishments were at home waiting for me.

I used to feel really conflicted about how to be the best mother for my children. I felt like I should *want* a career and I also felt like I should *want* to be at home with them all the time. In reality, I wanted neither. Or both. The reality is that I want to be at home with my kids most of the time, but I also want need some things in my life beyond them. Places where I exist outside of them, outside of being a wife or a mother. Regardless of how important those things are to me, I need a place that is my own.

I’m getting there. I have this coaching gig with Team in Training and it’s proven to be a wonderful experience. After my university program is over, I plan on continuing to teach on campus once or twice a week, depending on the class availability. I’ve signed up to complete a Yoga Teacher Training program starting next fall and afterwards plan on teaching some yoga classes through the week. It’s a far cry from how I expected to use my HR Certificate three years ago when I started, but life is about a journey, and this program allowed me to find the path that led me to where I am now (a very nice place).

That said, all of this also reinforced to me that day care, that full time outside the home childcare is not what I want for my kids. So we’ve started looking for a nanny. Someone to come three days a week and hang out with the kids while I run/work/whatever. Someone who can stay with them sometimes on the weekend if Steve and I get a chance to go away. No luck as of yet, but I feel very optimistic that we will find the right person by the time that summer vacation rolls around.

I’ve gone and am back and I don’t know what to say.

I wandered through the Himalayas and silently stepped into Buddhist Monasteries and woke up one day and climbed up hundreds of metres of crumbling rocks to watch the sun rise over Mt. Everest and I breathed Nepalese dust and food and dirty water into my body and lungs and I think that maybe I expected the world to gasp audibly when I came home and ask me Wasn’t it amazing?! and I would smile and nod sagely and tell them that it was more amazing than words could explain.

But three days before we came home, I got very, very sick and by the time I arrived, I was drained and on the verge of tears and rushed to my children and crouched on the floor of the airport sobbed with them in my arms. I came home and crawled into a ball and cried in Steve’s arms and slept and slept and slept.

When I was gone, the world didn’t stop. Women had children and my kids had a cough and Steve took part in the monotonous cycle of laundry and although I was temporarily deleted, I have been re-inserted into the cycle of lunch boxes and mis-matched socks and furry dogs. And in a way, it was almost like a dream.

Alena is in “pre-school” right now, but really, it’s just daycare. And guys? I’m so sick of daycare. I’m just… done with it. I want my kids out. I don’t want Leila in after-school care, I don’t want Alena there five day a week. I just feel like it’s time for my kids to be at home.

Due to buses and schedules and routines, I am going to keep them in until the end of June. That will keep Leila on the same bus route, it will get me through my program. But next year, when school starts again? I don’t want them to go back. It’s not the daycare’s fault (the girls go to a fine facility have made made friends there). It’s me. I hate arriving home at four-thirty with cranky kids who need my time but the kitchen is dirty and supper needs to be made. I hate that Leila gets off the bus and heads to another structured activity, just like the one she had been in since 8:30 that morning. It’s time for our family to make a change. I know this.

And yet, I don’t want to be home full time. So…

My tentative plan is to teach on campus as a TA two days a week. The prof has already extended the offer and I more than happily took it. I plan on continuing my Saturday gig with Team in Training and on taking a Yoga Teacher Training course for nine months next year (one weekend a month from September – June). I want to find a sitter who will come to my house for three days a week, plus one weekend a month. I want her to keep it clean and run the vaccuum once in a while. I want her to play with Alena and pick Leila up from the bus when I’m out. That’s it. But that’s what I want.

So back to my original question: is pre-school really necessary? Alena has been in daycare since she was 15 months old. She gets structure. She’s also smart, can recognize her name and write a couple of letters. Thanks to being a little sister who idolizes her big sister, she’s learned a lot from playing “school.” I’m more than willing to do any sort of activities that will help prepare her for primary. As far as I can see…. it’s ok to not put her in preschool. But am I missing something?

What do you think? How important is preschool?

Today I woke up slightly less congested, but still watery eyes and runny nose and sneezing. I needed to renew my passport and on the way home made myself stop at the gym. I had a kind of insanely intense 50 minute workout and now feel 100% better than I did yesterday.

The thing I always tell people when they ask me about working out while sick is that if it’s in your head, suck it up and run or workout. If it’s in your chest or is the flu, rest. Easy for me to say when I’m not sick though, right? Maybe I would have felt better yesterday had I just spent some time in my sneakers, but maybe I really did need to rest. It’s hard to tell when you can’t breathe and every time you bend over, you can feel your throbbing pulse in your sinuses.

Not that I’m advocating never taking a rest day, I’m just saying that our minds convince us that we’re too tired, too sick, too sore, too whatever more often than is actually the case.

I’m into my third month of this 12 week weight lifting program that I’ve been using as part of my training program for Hiking to Everest Base Camp in April. While I have to confess, I was hoping to be one of those people that was magically transformed into sinewy muscles (that hasn’t really happened), I also should make note that my eating hasn’t always been the greatest. I mean, I guess I’m solidly 80% healthy, but honestly? 20% less than ideal food doesn’t transform a body in two months. Anyway, I am stronger, no question. I try not to weigh myself and even if I were to tell you about a number, it sure wouldn’t be the number on the scale of the day that my period started that was a week late so I’m extra bloated, you know? But in reality, that doesn’t matter.

I was at a birthday party for one of Leila’s friends on Sunday and while I watched the kids play and poured them juice and tried to ignore the slightly awkward silence between me and the other moms (note: that is the one downside of kids parties when you don’t know the other parents. So. Awkward.), I was thinking about all the little girls there and enjoying their extremely noisy musical instrument parade and watching one little girl play with princess ponies or something in a castle and thinking about how our society molds these little people into big people.

We don’t have cable and so we don’t watch commercials and plus I don’t really buy my kids any toys other than Christmas and their birthdays and I try really, really hard not to fill their minds with crap. I read this post about preventing eating disorders in kids (go read it, seriously. I’ll wait. Done? Ok good.) and it really resonated with me.

Steve and I are both very conscious of feeding our kids healthy food (as I’ve mentioned here a lot of times), but we also don’t label food as “bad” or forbid anything. We give the kids dessert of ice cream sometimes and we let them eat chips and they have suckers and candy once in a while, we just make sure that they eat the healthy stuff first. And that’s what we tell them too: that it’s ok to eat treats, as long as you fuel the machine beforehand.

We also make sure we consistently tell both girls how smart they are, how kind they are, praise them for working hard at their colouring or printing or singing or running. We tell them they are strong and that yes, they are beautiful, but that beauty shines through from their hearts. That everyone’s beauty is kept in their heart and when they have a kind and loving heart, they are beautiful, no matter what their face or body or clothes look like.

And that’s all great. But I never thought about how the girls perceive what they overhear us saying about other people. About other women’s looks (anything from “she’s gained weight” to “she looked good!”) to people’s possession, the stuff.

Children hear so much more than what we say to them. They know when we’re not being sincere and they perceive how we see ourselves by the way we whisper about our body/success/life behind our hands to try and hide it from them.

So I’m done. I’m done with being critical of myself and the inch of fat on my stomach. I’m done commenting on other women’s bodies. From now on, I am making a concerted effort to not only focus on my own strengths (physical and otherwise), but also the strengths of others. My children can see through my insincerity regardless if I am talking about myself or someone else. From now on, I model the behaviour I want to teach them. Because it’s the easiest and most efficient way.

I believe in myself so that they won’t stop believe in themselves.

Here’s the deal: sometimes we take the kids to McDonald’s to let them play in the play house. And since it seems wrong to use the facilities without buying something, we get them a smoothie. That’s right: my kids have never eaten food from McDonalds (they have however had grilled cheese sandwiches from Dairy Queen).

I don’t think kids should eat fast food. For that matter, I don’t think anyone should eat it. Can’t say I never do, but I can say that it happens less than four times a year. (I do get me a big ol’ pile of poutine and garlic fingers to share with Steve about twice a month though.)

But here’s the deal: I don’t judge you if you eat it nor do I think you’re a bad parent if you take your kids for Happy Meals sometimes. I don’t really think you should but that doesn’t mean I think you’re not a good person or that it’s really any of my business at all. And so I’ll most likely keep my opinion to myself.

* * * * * * * *

You know I coach the Team in Training Halifax chapter, right? Well, one of the women who was a beginner runner had a really crappy run a couple of months ago. She had eaten a sandwich for supper and a boiled egg for breakfast and then tried to run 12k. Didn’t happen. Predictably, she bonked (crashed) and ended up having to walk the second half. I walked with her and we talked about fueling for a run. She told me that she had never thought of food as fuel before, but merely as something to fill the hole.

It amazes me that so many people don’t realize what food actually is. It’s fuel. And good fuel equals good performance (whether that be energy level at work or athletic performance).

Leila has quick energy crashes. She needs to eat every few hours and has always been that way. Alena? She gets hungry and asks for something to eat, but not Leila. Leila will end up laying on the couch crying before she realizes that she needs a snack. And so when she was a toddler, and the energy waves were even more pronounced than they are now, I never chose to give her candy or chips or fast food because she needed real fuel that would help her feel better (ie: perform). In a way, yes, I was against feeding her crap, but honestly? It was more from a sense of self-preservation that I didn’t give her a lot of sugar.

It took a while to apply the realization that food fueled Leila to my own life, but I have. I’m not saying that I never eat crap (I just got back from five days vacation where all I did was eat crap and drink too much), but I am saying that about 80% of the time, I put real fuel in my body. And that’s why I don’t think kids (or anyone) should eat fast food: because it’s crap.

* * * * * * * *

So….. I’m going to Nepal in April. For three weeks. With my dad and older brother to hike the Everest Base Camp.

(I know!)

On one hand: Wow! A three week hike in the Himalayas. Camping, no showers, carrying a heavy backpack. Amazing, unforgettable experience. When I was invited, I couldn’t say no. My dad has an adventure bug, but unfortunately he’s also got a bit of a bum ticker (that is very well controlled with his extremely healthy lifestyle), and this is his last big adventure. So while it’s an amazing thing to experience, it’s also a once in a lifetime thing to experience with my Dad (whom I adore) and my older brother (whom I also adore).

On the other hand: Oh my god I am leaving my children for three weeks and probably won’t have so much as cell service. Panic. Panic. Panic. (Seriously.)

Dad booked the plane tickets yesterday (April 8- April 30) and I kind of thought <em>holeeeee fuck</em> because it’s one thing to talk about three weeks and it’s another to read it on paper and realize that you are going to miss an entire month of life at home.

But! Despite the fact that it’s an extremely selfish thing for me to do (Steve works 60+ hours a week and will also be a single dad. My kids will spend too much time with sitters and at daycare.), it’s also the right thing. Or at least a really awesome thing.

So on top of running 20-ish kms every weekend with Team in Training (plus the couple shorter runs I get in through the week), I’ve been listing weights and hiking with a weighted backpack (I’m now carrying 36lbs for about 3+ hours of hiking per week). Plus school, plus the weekly maintenance of emails and advice to my runners, plus the marking contract I have at school plus four courses… that’s why I’ve been feeling so overwhelmed. 

As it is when you train for something big and important to you, it takes precedence over other things in your life (like cleaning). 

Anyway, I have four more months of school until I’m finished (and I’m away for one of them!), and then I think I’ll be able to heave a deep sigh of relief, clean my house, get back to some freelance writing and you know, being lazy. Except not really, because I think I’m going to run a marathon in September. But whatever! School will be done.

* * * * * * * *

On that note, I have to drive to school for a group meeting. Farewell, and hopefully it’s not another month before I post. (sorry bout that)

We are both the blocks of stone and the sculptors. We are the only ones who truly know what lies within.

Sometimes I feel that we can chisel ourselves into any masterpiece we choose, sometimes I feel that we are destined to be a specific masterpiece.

I’m rumbling in my head lately, buzzing from the half-marathon I ran last weekend and the lingering sense of strength. I’m at the almost overwhelmed point of school, so I took the day and kept Alena home with me. We went for a walk with Milo and talked and sang songs. We read books and while she napped, I had a hot bath. Then we arrived at daycare before Leila, so when she stepped off the bus, she hugged me and jumped into the car. This afternoon is cup cakes and Mickey Mouse cartoons and taking dinner to Steve since he’s working until 10.

It’s hard to balance everything, especially since it feels like I should be able to balance things better. I feel guilty that the kids are in daycare full time (and the fact that the guilt hasn’t ebbed in the five months they’ve been in proves to me that this shouldn’t be our permanent situation), but the kids being in daycare full time is the only way I’ve kept my sanity, made decent grades and still stayed active with running. I sometimes feel somehow “less” because I’m not good at juggling, because I don’t have a pressing job, because, because… I’m better at making those thoughts go away though and I’ve been focusing on the time I do have with them. I try to inhale them, push my love into them. I try not to yell or sigh tiredly. I try to laugh and cuddle. And then when we’re apart, I try to work hard, get my readings and assignments done instead of waste time on Facebook or Twitter (or here).

And for the most part, most days, I think I’m doing it mostly right.

Leila doesn’t like being stared at. She doesn’t like having her picture taken because, as she told me, it makes her feel funny inside when she thinks of the person behind the camera just looking at her. She also hates speaking in front of people. Which shouldn’t be a big deal for a five year old because, seriously, how much public speaking is there in grade primary?

She is part of one of the local Sparks troops (and I am a leader). We head out every Monday night, her in her pink shirt, I in my (dorky) blue one to a church hall full of screaming girls and crafts and badges. The first week after Christmas, we had a show and tell week and Leila brought her favourite blanket. By the time it was her turn to stand in front of everyone, she had already gotten nervous and ended up red-faced with tears in her eyes while I jumped to her rescue to tell them about her blanket.

Since Christmas, her class has been working on practicing more of their spoken French (she’s in immersion). Tomorrow is Leila’s turn. The teacher sent home a note emphasizing that while the children should come up with an idea of something to talk about, it’s not a big presentation and don’t put pressure on them (or let them put it on themselves) to memorize anything. Last night ended with Leila in tears because it’s almost her turn and everyone was going to look at her. She knows that she’d like to talk about playing with two of her friends, and after we got it out of her what they like to play together (Monster Tag and laying on the grass looking at the sky), we wrote it down and she said it to herself a few times.

I wrote her teacher a note as a heads up that Leila is very nervous and will probably get upset when it’s her turn. I don’t think that was too interfering, I wanted her to know so she could be prepared, but also for Leila.

Steve’s better at talking her through these things because I end up getting upset myself and then I’m holding her while she cries biting back tears ready to keep her home forever. Steve has a beautiful gift of being able to speak to people in the way they need to be spoken to and she hears what he’s saying. Unfortunately, he’s away tonight at a conference and the anxiety will be back around bedtime, mark my words.

Also, since I’m on a fret-streak here, there’s this kids race we do with the girls every June. Totally fun and a great atmosphere, except, guess who puts too much pressure on herself to win? And guess who isn’t the fastest runner? Every kid gets a medal and every kid is cheered for but last year, Leila stopped mid-race and cried because she had gotten passed by an older girl. It’s not that she’s a sore loser (well, no more-so than your regular five year old), it’s just that she really really wants to be the best.

The kids race is on the Saturday and the race event (5k, 10k, half marathon and full marathon) are on the Sunday. Steve wants to “run” the 5k with her this year. It takes place a week after her sixth birthday.

First of all, she is totally psyched and doesn’t even want to run in the kids race. Secondly, once the weather warms, he plans on taking her out a few nights a week and run/walk starting with 1k. Steve is rabidly aggressive and competitive, but he knows how to turn it off and this isn’t about Leila being the youngest kid at the race, this is about Leila learning that life isn’t about who crosses the finish line first.

I’m worried she’s too young and that it’s too far. Or not, maybe I’m just worried. About… nothing that I can actually articulate. I’m worried about Leila. Because she seems so small to have her foot in the real world already, mostly. Because it’s been such a big year for her and I know that sometimes she’s overwhelmed by it all. Because I miss her, oh man, I really, really miss spending all that time with her. I miss her physical presence, but also, I kind of miss her as a three year old and a four year old.

I wish so much that I could make her path easy. Oh, I know that isn’t right or possible or even fair to her, because there is so very much she has to learn on her own, but I do really wish I could take it all up, lift it off of her – the nerves, the fear, the hurt. I think how couldn’t you like people looking at you? you’re so beautiful and amazing and I worry that she’ll struggle with low self-esteem. I want to gush and tell her how wonderful she is, but I wonder if she’ll look back and think that I was putting un-due pressure on her for perfection.

Part of all of this comes from my own struggle, I realize that. I’m so scared that despite everything we can do and show her, that one day she won’t love herself. I’m scared that she’ll wake up and feel unappreciated and unloved, that she’ll get lost on her own road where I can’t go. I’m scared that I’m not enough for her, that somehow my own flaws will hold her back. I’m worried that she’ll feel that her sister is loved more, because her sister is loud and funny and gets away with more because she inherently just knows how to push and push and push.

My real wish for Leila, is that she will keep the love that is in her heart – and she feels love so deeply and openly – for her entire life. That she will share that love with everyone, yet not let those who are unworthy of it hurt her. That she will learn how to turn that love inward and focus it on herself so that she can take the gift that is her beautiful spirit and shine it out onto the world.

As I imagine what my stomach would say to me, how it would justify itself and how it would accost me for my cruelty, I realized how hard I really am on myself.

Steve compared me to a woman I know who is very lean and muscular. He told me that she doesn’t work for it, that skinny is genetics and skinny people have very visible muscle when they work out a few times a week. He told me that he didn’t care about her flat stomach and that the reason he thought that my stomach was beautiful was because inside of it our two babies grew. He told me that her flat stomach was a gift – genetics – but that I took mine. I worked for it. And that’s why he loves me stomach, because it’s part of me.

I’ve been thinking, really trying to change my perception about how I look at my body. So many people have said to me that my kids are worth loose skin and saggy breasts and yes, of course they are! But to me, the two really weren’t connected. Wishing my belly button didn’t look like a perpetual frown didn’t mean I didn’t love my kids, it just meant that I missed my perky, happy, 24 year old belly button. After reading that article, I tried thinking about what my stomach or breasts would say to me. And I realized that they have helped me with the biggest gifts. My stomach housed my children. And my breasts fed them, for months and months.

Maybe I can start to look at these things as badges of honour. Maybe woman (not girl) breasts and stomachs are something to be proud of. Maybe it’s this “Get your pre-baby body back!” mentality that we all have. You can’t get your pre-baby body back because it doesn’t exist. And it’s not even that it doesn’t exist as in it’s gone, it’s just that you, as a woman and human being have evolved.

My body is stronger now. I am stronger now. And in a way, that’s weird to say because I am so glaringly aware of all my twisted thoughts and mixed up perceptions when I wasn’t before, but I believe that being aware of them is part of what makes me stronger. Because if you don’t even realize why you’re so hard on yourself, you can’t really understand how to fix it.

Maybe one of the reasons it’s so easy to cast stones at my physical perception of myself is because taking the safety net of physical critique leaves nothing but my soul.

I wonder, if when you’re happy with yourself, truly content with who you are you wonder about the state of your muffin top. (I wouldn’t think so.) And so maybe I focus on the exterior because I’m actually afraid to lift up the outside layer and check out what’s underneath.

In the past four months, I’ve coached 13 people through half marathon training. I’ve motivated them. I’ve given them (good!) advice. I’ve made them laugh and I’ve helped them see a side of themselves that they may not have seen before. On the first day that we met, we ran 4k together, and for a lot of them, that was the farthest they had ever run.

In the past four months, I’ve run two half marathons myself (and will be running a third on Sunday). I’ve swallowed down guilt almost everyday that I left my children at childcare to go to school or to come home and do school work. I am currently coasting at an above 3.0GPA (which is higher than my BA GPA was). I decided to finish my program this year, and I am almost there.

In the past five weeks, I have gone to the gym four to five times a week to lift weights and strength train – something that I really don’t enjoy – because I know that for my hike in April I need to be stronger.

In the past year, I have changed the way my family eats. I have cooked real food for them most nights.

Despite all of this, I have also learned how to slow down. Every night I say a bedtime prayer with my babies and sing them a lullaby. Every morning I spend five minutes in bed with them, cuddling.

So why am I afraid to look deeper than physically at myself? What is it exactly that I’m afraid I’ll find?