Swimsuit Season

How many swimsuits do you own? I have about 5 that are lounging about in my dresser drawer. I wear one of them the most and a second one when I can't find the first one. The others? They're all waiting for me to get back into shape.

One of the five was an emergency purchase - I was about to go swimming somewhere or the other and had forgotten my suit, so I had to take what was available. It is, understandably enough, ugly. Another one, I bought on a business trip many years ago because I didn't realize that Texas really was that frickin' hot in March. Swimming in March? The thought never crossed my mind until I was stranded in a burningly hot TX without a suit.

The one I wear the most often is the "mom" swimsuit. It's boring. Black. Hopefully it provides enough coverage to leave me less embarrassed than I might otherwise be out in public mostly undressed. You know the suit I'm talking about, right? The one that you buy when your body stops being all lithe and pert. When you no longer want to draw attention to yourself and instead just want to fade into the background.

The other two are my favorites, of course. The two I can no longer wear? The ones that scream: "Woo! I'm swimmin' over heah!" I'm out of shape. I've had 3 children since I last wore those suits. Part of me thinks I should just give up on them and give them away.

Another part of me sees them as a challenge.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed an ad about the 30 day challenge a number of bloggers were taking up as part of a review of some video game for the Wii. Not having a Wii, I didn't really care, but the little blurbs that were written about those bloggers piqued my interest. Since the twins were napping, I read through the reviews. All of them.

I was sold.

My biggest complaint about getting out of the house is all about timing. I have to time everything just right so that the twins (or Caitlin when she's in town) aren't over tired or hungry or crabby when I want to get out and do something. Be it shopping, running errands, doctor's appointments or just going to the park, there's a very small window of opportunity that I have to hit just right. Some days it just doesn't seem worth the commotion it takes to get all four (or 5 if Eric's around) of us out of the house. Unsurprisingly enough, this leaves me without any "me" time. You can imagine what kind of shape I'm in since I'm also not farming this year (that's just a long sad story). So, to read about all of these other ladies that were working out in their living rooms, having a good time while doing it and getting in shape? Count me in!

Since I hadn't bought a new lens for my camera as I'd intended this year, I still had my birthday money slowly burning a hole in my bank account. I had Eric do the research to get a good price and we bought the Wii and, most importantly, the EA Sports Active program. And it...it...rocks!

I'm not kidding, as goofy as it seems to run in place in your living room, watching your Sim and your virtual trainer, it really works. You sweat, you run, you curl your biceps and play virtual tennis (a sport at which I virtually excel). I discovered very quickly that my legs aren't in near as good condition as my arms. Makes sense, though, when you think about it. I heft a pair of ~20 lb twins all day long, so doing a few dozen bicep curls is no big deal. The running, however, kills me. I sound like a train huffing up a giant hill in the mountains. A wounded train. The first two days showed me that I don't squat nearly as much as I think I do while cleaning up and left me sore for the next 3 days.

It was a good kind of sore. And that was on easy mode.

Now? After the first week, I ramped up to medium and bought a 3 pack of resistance bands to make the exercises more challenging. I still can't run worth a damn and my ankle is complaining (the ankle I hurt when I fell off Misty's roof twisted my ankle on the roof stairs almost fell off Misty's roof and came this close to smashing my camera four years ago) on a daily basis, but...!

But...!

While my weight hasn't gone down (yet) and instead has risen (muscle still weighs more than fat, y'all) my body fat percentage has dropped 3%. In two weeks. Woo!

That is progress I can get behind.

And it's been fun. I'm halfway through my 30 day challenge and I've completed 11/20 workouts (it has scheduled rest days after every two workouts). It hasn't been easy, but it has been fun and somewhat addictive. I've been drinking a boatload more water, too. The best part is the fact that it's actually having a measurable effect and it's something I can do while the twins are sleeping. To be honest, I don't really care about the number on the scale, I care about how I fit in my clothes and whether parts of me are wiggling when I don't want them to. It's about me getting back into a shape I like and setting reasonable goals for myself. Reasonable like this:

• Short term goal: fit comfortably into my "normal" clothes
• Mid term goal: fit into my "skinny me" clothes
• Long term goal: fit into my favorite swimsuits
• Even longer term goal: buy new clothes for the new normal, fit version of me and stay that way, dammit!
  

While I know that it's going to take more than 30 days to get me back into my favorite swimsuits, I'm know that I'm up to the challenge.

How about you? What do you do to get into shape?

Boys & Girls

A few weeks back, Caitlin came up to me after school, during one of the rare occasions when I went to pick her up alone, and asked if she could have a playdate with E.

Now a request for a playdate after school is not unusual. What was unusual was that E is a boy.

I've got to tell you, I was surprised. Stunned even. At a temporary loss for words. Then E, standing tall next to Caitlin on his scooter said, "Yeah, Caitlin's mom! We'd like to have a playdate! Can we do it now?" I stuttered and then hedged by asking, "Where's your mom?"

This was the first time since Caitlin was in preschool (the good one) that a boy wanted to have a playdate. I wanted to make sure he was serious and to eyeball his folks before I either handed my daughter off to a stranger's care for two hours or took on a boy I'd never met until that moment. Turns out his mom is quite nice and was just as surprised as I was. Both of us, however, jumped all over the chance to have our kids mix it up. For me, anything that would get her hanging with her peers and having fun for a couple of hours was the big draw as well as the possibility of an actual friendship with a boy again.

When Caitlin was in her fabulous-yet-seriously-expensive preschool, the teachers referred to everyone in the classroom as "friends" instead of students and they worked on being inclusive instead of exclusive, especially when misbehavior would occur. (They would essentially stage little love-ins when someone got in trouble.) I loved the place, Caitlin loved the place and the staff loved her. However, eventually we had to say goodbye and started going to an inexpensive and more mainstream (and cheaper) preschool conveniently located down the street from our house. And did I mention it was cheaper? Yeah.

It was in that preschool that Caitlin discovered the division between boys and girls. The kids there all seemed to have siblings and were very serious about sex-based separations. Boys couldn't play with girls and girls couldn't play with boys. All of the standard irritating sayings were trotted out as evidence: "Girls rule and boys drool!". When those words dripped venomously from Caitlin's mouth, we had a long talk.

"You know, Daddy's a boy and cousin Max is a boy and Grampy is a boy. Do you think they drool?" Are stupid? Ugly? Mean? Etc. Ad nauseum. OMG do they hand out pamphlets on the differences between boys and girls and the ways to make either sex feel smaller than the belly of a grasshopper? Honestly! I have to tell you, it made me very sad to see Caitlin rejected simply because her plumbing didn't match theirs. Then it happened again in kindergarten. At least until she tamed The Angry Young Man with her uber friendliness. Weird, but good.

Today, however, was the second playdate for Caitlin and E.

Apparently the first one wasn't a fluke, they really did enjoy playing together. So now we're getting ready to set up a third.

Interestingly (Where interesting = hair-pulling-frustrating.), when one of the other boys in their class heard of it, he tried to convince Caitlin that it wasn't going to happen. This pronouncement upset her terribly. Clearly she was violating the social norms by actually expecting to have a playdate with someone of the opposite sex.

Can someone explain to me why my kid would believe some other kid's word on anything over my own? It took awhile, but after the storm of crying was over, she believed us that they really were going to have a playdate no matter what that other boy thought. And so they did.

Someone please tell me that this generation can actually be friends and fill in the chasm of differences that separate boys and girls? Someone?

Anyone?

Please?

Bueller?