Pumping Iron

I would imagine that many people in our area were disappointed with the July Fourth weather yesterday. I, however, had the perfect day. We were up at our normal time, somewhere between 5:30 and 6 a.m. We headed off to the beach a little before 9 a.m. and managed to catch the last 30 minutes or so of sunshine before the clouds moved in. We left the beach around 11 a.m. and we were clearly the first people to leave the beach as the attendants parking cars looked at us as if we were crazy. We live near a state park and the beach there at 9 o'clock was pretty much empty. By 11 o'clock it was hard to find a clear path to steer the jogging stroller through to get back to the walkway to the parking lot. We overheard some people talking about how they were in the car over an hour and a half to get there and it reminded me, once again, how lucky we are to live 2.5 miles away. We do have a small beach problem, though, Superman. Last summer, he loved the beach. This summer, not so much. He seems like a fearless kid much of the time but he's got two big fears in life, bugs and crabs. All winter he talked about crabs at the beach and how they were going to pinch him. We assured him that crabs do live in the water at the beach, but they won't pinch him. It took all of five minutes on our first trip to the beach in May for us to be made into liars. We sunblocked the kids and sent them off to the water. As SuperDad and I were setting up the blankets and such we hear Superman in near hysterics about 4 feet from the edge of the water. Sure enough, a blue crab, large enough that it would have been a keeper, had pinched his toe. The woman next to us said she'd been coming to this beach for 50 years and she'd never seen a blue crab on the open water side. And, of course, it had to be right near Superman. Ever since then, he cries when he's in the water and if he's ever touched by a piece of seaweed, or steps on a shell he falls apart. We've tried holding his hand as he walks and cries, because we just can't carry him all the time. Then he gets out of the water, plays in the sand and cries because his hands are sandy. We tell him to wash the sand off and he cries because his hands are wet. And yet, we get in the car and what's the first thing he says "We go beach again another day. Have fun at beach." At least he remembers things in a positive light.

After the beach and showers to get off the sand we had lunch and the kids watched a movie. I put Superman down for a nap and he protested quite loudly. I made a deal with him that if he was still awake in 10 minutes he could get back up and play and not take a nap. He made it to about 4 minutes and then slept for a while. He woke up again crying, so I went and laid down next to him, he curled up with his arms around my neck and fell asleep. I was going to wait a few minutes until he was in a deeper sleep to move his arms and get out of the bed. Next thing I knew it was 45 minutes later and he was still curled up with me, sleeping. There was a nice breeze and soft rain outside, it had been the perfect afternoon for a nap. After our cookout dinner, good thing Dad braved the rain to grill, we all played some games and then the kids did their normal wrestling/running around thing until bedtime. A great day.

Since I mentioned nothing about working out at all, you might wonder where the pumping iron came in to title this post. A few weeks ago my bloodwork showed that my iron levels were quite low. This was the same time I had a few posts complaining about exhaustion. Apparently, the two were directly related. The addition of the iron supplemented multi-vitamin has made a world of difference in my energy level. This weeks workouts were much better than the past few weeks, and I've stayed away from junk food, for the most part, since last week. It's amazing how much the proper nutrition changed everything. I've even lost a little weight, I had gotten a little carried away with the empty calories for about six weeks there and packed on a bit more than I should have. I'm certainly not trying to diet, but eating well compared with what I have been doing might lead to a leveling off the weight gain. The unfortunate part is that I haven't quite added enough fiber to my diet to compensate for the extra iron, so the old digestive system isn't quite so happy. Oh well. Off to my bowl of Special K red berries and a banana. Feels to be back in the swing of things.

Pregnancy status- 38 days to go!