You guys, I am so tired.  These 5:30 classes are amazing, but I’m beat by late afternoon.  It’s a little bit sad.

Anyway, continuing with the “it’s nice out so we will do lots of running” theme:

Running and overhead squats.  Easy, basic stuff I’ve been doing since day one. 

Except today was hard.  I’ve accepted that my “new normal” is just that CrossFit is harder than usual lately, but my hips and lower back really ached while running.  And on the overhead squats, I lost my balance and fell on one of them.  (NOT a hard fall or anything to worry about.  I “fell” about six inches and landed on my thigh.)  That particular move requires a lot of core strength and balance, and I have a counterweight I’m not used to strapped to my middle now.  Basically, at the bottom of the squat, the weight went one way, I went the other. 

More than anything, it just kind of shook my confidence and made me feel like sort of an asshole.  I’d even gone down to a lower weight, but it wasn’t enough.

So, I guess that’s the end of overhead squats for me for awhile.  I think I’ll probably modify with regular front or back squats or maybe thrusters instead.

Still, not a bad result, all things considered:

And since I haven’t posted food for awhile, check out my delicious lunch (that was half green!):

Roast beef and melty cheddar on a pretzel roll, with a side salad of spinach/almonds/balsamic/goat cheese/dried cranberries.  I’m craving beef and spinach this week.  Maybe my iron’s low?  Hmm.  But yes!  Working on the “more fruit and veggies” goal, clearly.

I’m going to Chicago this weekend to see my family and I can’t wait!  Eek.  Only two more days!

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ll know that my least favorite CrossFit exercise is burpees. 

I hate them.  Do you want to know why?  Well, it started out with the fact that I am extremely uncoordinated.  It took me about three months to put everything together and do a burpee without saying, “Okay, down on the ground, feet out, chest to the floor, push up,  jump your feet up, stand up, jump, clap” over and over again.  It is not exactly an intuitive movement.

Once I started to be able to execute the burpees without too much thought, I just disliked them because they’re hard.  And all the up and down makes me sort of dizzy.

So, you can imagine my horror at today’s WOD:

Not. Thrilled.

But, you know, like all things CrossFit, I just did the damn thing at my own pace and determined that I wasn’t going to kill myself with the effort.  Burpees get my heart pumping quickly and I didn’t want to reach that uncomfortable point today.  So, I didn’t.

Today’s gasser was an 800m run for time. 

The slowdown is becoming more and more rapid these days.  I really feel the extra weight when I’m running these days, and I don’t really want to move as fast because I can feel the baby starting to put pressure on my bladder and it’s uncomfortable.  Apparently this is the point when he starts packing on the pounds, so it makes sense.

What’s your most hated exercise?

“Mother’s Day is a day of appreciation and respect. I can think of no mothers who deserve it more than those who had to give a child back.”

-Erma Bombeck

When I woke up this morning, Tim was nudging me and informing me that he’d made me a stack of chocolate chip pancakes as my Mother’s Day breakfast.  Very sweet of him, especially since I don’t really feel like a mother yet and therefore worthy of gifts or anything.

I wish I could just celebrate my first pseudo-Mother’s Day without a second thought.  Don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled and so thankful for the little boy who’s been punching and kicking me like a tiny ninja for the last few days.  But I can’t help but think about what could have been today, you know?

I could be 39 weeks pregnant today.  I could have a tiny squishy newborn, even.  Next Sunday, May 20th, would have been my due date with the pregnancy we lost back in October, and today’s hit me harder than I expected it to.

Feeling this baby kick inside me fills me with incredible joy, but today I’m also grieving for what could have been.  Pregnancy is not a cure-all—the scars remain, and I wonder how things would have been different all the time if that first pregnancy had just worked out the way it was supposed to.  Was it a boy or a girl?  Would I have felt differently, had it easier or harder?   Would I have taken it for granted, not knowing what a loss feels like?  Would we have been ready?  Nothing will ever replace the babies we lost on the way to this one, and I know I’ll always feel their absence on days like today amidst the joy that I’ll undoubtedly feel, too.

So.  Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there, whether your babies are with you or not.

Fourth workout this week!  I’m killing my new goals.  Boom.

Saturdays at CrossFit are partner days. It’s kind of funny, because it’s always a little middle-school-like to be like, “Do you want to be my partner?” and such.  Plus, Saturdays are usually a different crowd than my 5:30 am crowd, so I don’t have my built-in pregnancy support system.

Anyway, today’s WOD was kind of scary looking.  Now that it’s warm out, we’re running a lot more! 

I found a partner who was new to CrossFit, so we didn’t mind taking it relatively easy.

So, basically we switched off doing 200m sprints, then did 3 rounds of the 20/40/60/80 thing, then finished up with more 200m sprints. 

The fun twist in this WOD is that the deadlifts were partnered—so we lifted the bar together.  We did 125# together.

My favorite part of Saturday workouts is that we run by a grocery store that cooks some sort of delicious brunch, so every time you do a sprint you smell bacon and fresh bread.  Drool.

Anyway, we finished last in the class, but everyone stayed to cheer us on until we were done. 

The rest of the day was spent relaxing, which I sorely needed after working so hard this morning!

We also have a start on our gallery wall for the nursery.  I found the frames today and framed a few things I’d collected—more are on the way.  I have to admit, I felt terrible cutting pictures out of books, even though they were destined for the trash pile at the library, saved only by my crafty mother-in-law.

(Arrangement will change.)

We just finished up dinner out (disappointing) and watching The Muppets Movie (delightful!).  The baby’s been quite squirmy and active today, which is bizarre but fun.  He barely moved yesterday!

Happy early Mother’s Day to all the moms out there!  I admit, I don’t feel quite like I can partake in the festivities yet, but have requested pancakes for breakfast from Tim anyway.  I hope that’s okay.

These weeks are starting to seriously fly by.  Yeesh.  It seems like first trimester crawled, but second trimester will be over before I know it!

I went into crazy nesting mode last weekend, and this is the result:

We have a painted nursery with an assembled crib in it.  Progress!
Randoms:

• The main problem this week was, again, my asthma.  I think I’ve found the perfect cocktail of medications that are relatively pregnancy-safe (Singulair plus PulmiCort plus emergency albuterol, with a chaser of Zyrtec to keep the allergies from flaring me up too badly)
• Still craving Panera breakfast sandwiches.  Ate one, want more.  What the hell.  Also, still very much interested in peanut butter and deli meat. 
• I am beginning to get the feeling that I will not be one of those cute pregnant ladies.  My face is pregnant.  My ass is pregnant.  I’m barely halfway through and I already feel like Jessica Simpson.  When people find out I’m not due until September, they’re kind of like "….ohh."
• My hips ache at the end of the day. Sciatic pain is off and on.
• Three solid workouts this week!  Two were great, one was terribly hard.  I’ll take it.  Maybe four, if I make it to CrossFit later today.

NAMING this baby is also on my mind lately.  It’s kind of a scary responsibility to name a child.  Tim and I have three main rules:

1. Cannot contain an extraneous y.  No Ayden, Jayden, Camdyn, etc.
2. Cannot start with the same letter as our last name.  Tim is not a fan of alliteration and I’m not either.
3. Cannot also be a colonial occupation.  No Mason, Cooper, Chandler, Hunter, etc.

We’re also not telling people what the name is before the baby is here (including you!) because a) the odds that we will have finalized a name are quite low and we don’t want to be locked into anything; b) we don’t want to deal with people being judgey; and c) it feels kind of weird to me to call him by name before he’s here.

We have fairly classic tastes and tend to gravitate towards traditional Irish/British-type names.  We currently have a list of 30ish names for each sex in a shared Google Doc that we add and subtract from periodically.  I am slightly more adventurous than Tim, but not very.

My standard is that the name must fit well in both of the following sentences:

"Mrs. Brie, can _________ come out and play?"

AND

"Now introducing Supreme Court Justice __________ Lastname."

Easy, right?

What are your favorite boy names?

Three WODs this week!  I’m on a roll.  Which is great, since, you know, I publicly declared that as one of my goals yesterday.

Today was a fun day at CrossFit.  As part of the warm up, we played medicine ball musical chairs—if you’re not squatting over a med ball when the music stops, you’re out!

I have also begun using a two-step analysis at CrossFit to determine what I can and can’t do (also another part of my goal—to know my limits):

• Step one: Ask, “Can I physically do this?”  Some things, I just can’t physically do anymore, mostly ab work—sit-ups, supermans, et cetera.
• Step two: Ask, “SHOULD I physically do this?”  This is less clear, because often I WANT to do things, but it’s just probably not a great idea.  Like, doing handstand walks on concrete looked fun today (really!) but the risk of falling over was just not worth it.  And in today’s WOD, I looked at the Rxed weight, and knew I COULD do it Rxed, but probably SHOULDN’T. 

We had a choice today between Grace and Isabel—either 30 clean and jerks for time, or 30 snatches for time.  I, like most of the class, chose Grace, which was the clean and jerks.

So back to the limits thing.  Clean and jerks and snatches are both very technical lifts that require a lot of good mechanics, so to speak.  So yes.  I have no doubt that I physically CAN put up 30 85# clean and jerks, but my core strength is gone and I feel a little more loosey goosey on difficult lifts lately.  And if I can’t do a lift like that with good form, I’m not going to do it, because dropping that much weight with a protruding belly is bad news.

Anyway.  I did Grace with 62#, with good form, in 5 minutes and 8 seconds.  Not earth shattering, but a good little workout that I felt strong doing.

Anyway.  I’m thrilled it’s the weekend.  I have no plans aside from perhaps trying to find frames for our gallery wall in the nursery, and hey, maybe another CrossFit WOD since I’m feeling good.

I will leave you with this hilarious photo, showing you just how diligent our UPS man is:

That is a 40 pack of toilet paper from Amazon Prime, hidden carefully under our doormat in a special corner of our porch not visible from the street.  Someone’s getting a Christmas tip this year!

So. You all know I’ve been talking about my pregnancy quite a bit. And of course, I love CrossFit and have been talking about that a lot, too.

(Half baked! 20 weeks in, 20 weeks to go. And you know that belly’s cramping my CrossFit style lately.) But recently I was approached to work with Under Armour, and they asked me to set a goal. Not a wishy washy goal, but a real “I Will” statement. You know I’m into goals—I’ve had a tab on my blog dedicated to them from the time I started blogging nearly three years ago. And even though those goals have changed as time goes by, I always have new ones in the back of my mind to add to the list. So, yes. I’m into these kinds of statements, obvs. And I took their challenge. I wrote my goal out. I will have a healthy pregnancy. Pretty broad, right? So then I started to break it down and define what that actually means to me, in terms of actual, measurable goals. (Note: I recognize that a LOT of what goes down in pregnancy is out of my control, and all of these are supposing an uneventful next few months, health-wise.)

• Work out 3-4 days a week. I was CrossFitting 5 days a week pre-pregnancy, but it’s intense exercise and I find I need more rest and recovery time than before. I don’t want to push myself to exhaustion.

• Know my limits. It is hard for me, sometimes, to calm down and not give 110% at the gym. One thing CrossFit has taught me is I am not into moderate exercise. You won’t find me in a gentle prenatal yoga class, and if one more person tells me that walking is a great for pregnant women, my head will explode. I LIKE to push really hard, sweat my butt off, and leave feeling like I couldn’t do a single bit more. But that’s not a good idea anymore. So, I’m challenging myself to relax a bit about it all, and just appreciate that I’m still moving and doing something.

• More fruits and veggies. In first trimester, I pretty much existed on Cinnamon Toast Crunch and macaroni and cheese. Now that I feel good again, I need to get out of some of the bad habits I’ve established! It’s summertime and produce is great. I need to take advantage.

• Take my vitamins. I’m good at this already, but I will continue to take my prenatals every day.

• Don’t stress about the post-baby body. The Under Armour challenge is called What’s Beautiful, and I want to take that to heart. Not to be all hippy-dippy, but it’s pretty beautiful that my body is growing a tiny human. I want to continue to appreciate that after I’ve given birth. I know I won’t look the same after this experience is over, and that’s okay. I want to get truly comfortable with that fact before I give birth.

So. Who’s with me? You can join the challenge with Under Armour Women here. You can set a goal, support other women, and win some great prizes, including $1000 in Under Armour gear. And, as a super extra special bonus: one winner among all participating blogs will win a $500 Under Armour gift card! (I know, right?) Just leave a comment letting me know which UA item you’d most like to try to enter for a chance to win! (I’m pretty excited to try the Charm Tank, and, um, in my current state, I could probably use an Armour Bra or two.) SWEEPSTAKES/GIVEAWAY RULES Rules: No duplicate comments. You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods: a) Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post b) Tweet (public message) about this promotion, including exactly the following unique terms in your tweet message: “#whatsbeautiful” “#sweepstakes”; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post c) Blog about this promotion and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post. To comply with FTC Guidelines (see http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm), entrants’ blog posts must disclose that they are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post. d) For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry. This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected. The Official Rules are available here. This sweepstakes runs from 5/10-5/21. Be sure to visit the Under Armour page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers’ posts!

Back on Black Friday, I declared this WOD the hardest I’d ever done.

I’m not sure if it’s because it was a harder WOD altogether, or because I’m 21 weeks pregnant with asthma issues, but this morning’s gave it a run for its money.

Maybe it’s because I now hate running-heavy WODs (which, what?  I ran a marathon and five half mara thons), or maybe it’s because my run has turned into what I affectionately refer to as a “spirited waddle”, or maybe it’s because I can’t box jump anymore, or maybe it’s because I couldn’t even do a handstand push-up before I was pregnant.  But this was seriously, seriously hard.  Like, I doubted I’d finish at times, and was the last one working out of the whole class since I was in the second wave of starts.

It was hard.  But I finished. #storyofmylife

In other news, happy two year anniversary to us!

Tonight, we will celebrate with grilled cheese and our son kicking me in the lungs.  As Tim says, we are very lucky to have found each other. 

I did it!

My asthma is still bothering me, but I can’t let it scare me off from the gym.  Exercise isn’t a trigger, so I just kept repeating that today.

Also: “get your ass out of bed.”  That was helpful.  I’ve been more tired lately, and I have a feeling that’s been part of my motivation issue lately.

Today’s WOD was 10 rounds for time of 15 push-ups and 15 deadlifts.

Rx weight for women was 95#, which I can do, no problem, but for 150 reps I went down to 75#, a weight that’s challenging for me, but not to a point where I’m straining.  It’s harder to deadlift now since I can’t engage my core as well!

The push-ups are just increasingly weird.  I might start subbing something soon.

All in all, not a bad finish.

Hilariously, the gasser today was "how long can you hold a plank?”  which, I mean, I’ll let you figure out how that ended.  Imagine doing a plank after swallowing a five pound bag of angry squirrels.  Yeah. 

Soooo I stretched instead.

In other news, today I discovered the epic combination of peanut butter Cheerios + milk + chocolate protein powder.  Delightful AND filling, which is a good thing, because I had a hollow leg today!

Now.  Let’s see if I can keep this motivation train going, shall we?

Twenty.  Two-zero.  Um, what?

We are still in A-1 “getting shit done” mode.

Exhibit A: paint samples.

Exhibit B: crib in the house.

Exhibit C: fabric samples and prints.

We are painting Lumpy’s room TODAY.  And I’m going to set up this crib this weekend if it kills me.  Suddenly, our summer is looking really busy, with lots of weddings, family visits, friend visits, and showers, and I’m freaking out a bit about getting everything done in time for baby’s arrival.

Other updates this week:

• Cravings: peanut butter, milk, and deli meat (safely heated; specifically, turkey).  And still with the Panera breakfast sandwiches.  Anything salty.
• My asthma has been the worst part of this week.  Pregnancy is exacerbating the crap out of my lungs—I’m carrying high, so I think they’re getting a little squished up in there, and allergy season here is terrible too.
• Movement wise, baby appears to be a night owl.  I don’t feel him very much until after lunch, when he wiggles about for awhile and then goes back to sleep.  After dinner through bedtime appear to be the time when he practices to become the Mizzou starting kicker in 2032.

And that’s that.  Here’s hoping I can be a little more active in week 21!