I'm not exaggerating when I say that I really do make a gosh darn good pasta sauce. Okay, you think. That's fine. But really. It's worth trying out. 

Last year five of our friends sold their houses and upgraded. Well, four friends and one across-the-street neighbor with whom we never interacted, not once ever in three years. Still. 

I kind of lost myself for a bit.

Earlier this month I ran my longest race since May 2014. 10K! (6.2 miles) I had put together a pretty serious but manageable training schedule leading up to it - about 8 weeks - getting in 3-4 runs per week. Of those runs I did 3-4. Total. Went running maybe 4 times in two months. 

But you know what? IT WORKED. 

You've heard the phrase, "9 months to put it on, 9 months to take it off," right? It's about how women who are pregnant presumably put on weight during that time, and that those women should be gentle with themselves after childbirth and maybe let it take some time for the body to, er, get back to normal. Or as normal as it can be again.

When you've just had a baby the idea that it could take the entire time you were pregnant (which at this time also seems like an eternity) to lose that baby weight sounds awful. AWFUL AWFUL. And depressing. And kind of bubble-bursting. I remember thinking to myself in March, "No way. I'm gonna run and eat well and work out with weights and do yoga and be fit for summer come June." 

Sometime in April I decided that was stupid.

This past week I was at a conference for work out in Estes Park, Colorado. Not the worst place to have to live and learn things for a few days! I've always loved mountains. Every morning the sunrise would shine on the mountain tops to the west and I swear I heard Julie Andrews singing - even though we weren't in Austria. (Maybe it was John Denver?)

I missed my buddies back home something fierce. Dad and son got to spend four days together (J took off work) so I knew they were fine without me, but still. My heart longed for snuggles with my buddies.

I wrote this back in February of this year, when O and I were still new to each other and I was still kind of a mess. I never published it, and I'm not sure why. Maybe it was all still too raw. Too close. I was angry with books and bloggers for not being honest about what living with a baby is actually like. 

I re-read it today. It's almost 8 months later and boy are we both in a different place! A better place. We have routine. We have a schedule! But more importantly, when we get off schedule, when we need to switch things up, we can. O will sleep at night. I will sleep at night. It's not as panic-inducing as it was during those first months. We've hit a rhythm. A stride. (I'm not cocky, it's just true right now. We're in between bouts of teething, though, so it's just a period of calm before another storm.)

Anyway. I decided to post this after all. It's where I was, and maybe some of you have been there or are there, too. Like I said, we're not there anymore. It got better. It will get better, friends!