Today

Today has been a nice day.  It's a Saturday, for starters, so that means Jason is home with us.  I got in another great 5 mile run with negative splits and that fills me with joy.  Part of me has been a little afraid to love so ardently what I loved before I had Eloise because that would look like I didn't love Eloise as much as I should, but that isn't true.  I'm still Jane the girl who loves to run and I will always be.  I hope.  I've been that girl through middle school, high school, college, a year in China, some years as a single white female, newly-weddedness, marriage, old jobs and new jobs and now I'm still that girl in motherhood.  I'm Jane the girl who loves to run and the girl who loves motherhood even more.

But that doesn't mean motherhood is easy peasy.  And if I'm anything, I am someone who does NOT like to admit something is hard.  Because that would mean I'm weak and I don't like to be (look) weak.  I like to be Big Strong Jane who can handle anything (and I can handle most things - even the "hard" in motherhood).

I get really tired and sometimes I am cranky at Jason.  If I don't run or work out I get cranky too.  (Poor Jason).  Some evenings my arms and back ache from holding her and I just want to put her down for a second, but then she is fussy and I'd rather have an aching back.  I don't like having extra weight on my person.  I just don't.  That doesn't mean I'm judging anyone with extra weight, that just means I don't like mine.  This is another thing that is hard to admit because if I don't like my weight, it might seem like I don't like Eloise because she is the reason for that extra weight, or it might make me look just plain shallow.  But no, I LOVE Eloise while still not liking the extra weight.  And this may sound conceited, but it has been a long time since I've had extra weight to dislike.  I also know for a fact I'm not shallow so that will have to do.

Today my mom and a few other friends ran the Southern Tennessee Plunge Marathon in Winchester, TN.  I ran that one last year and LOVED it.  I hadn't trained for it at all, but it turned out to be one of my favorite marathon experiences ever because it was just so lovely.  It was the last big race I ran before getting pregnant the next month.  Since then I've viewed it as my little gift from God before the really BIG gift from God.  Kind of a last hurrah before marathon running was put on hold.  So this year I remembered loving it and thought of all my peeps who were running it and I got a tad sad.  There is also my old group of running girls who are about to run a marathon together.  For a few of them it is their first ever.  It makes me sad that I have not been a part of that.  They even made shirts.  How fun is that?  And now I can hardly get them to remember to add me back to the e-mail list when planning morning runs.  That may be even more sad.

None of that keeps me down, though, because of Eloise.  I adore that child.  I love motherhood way more than I thought I would. You really just have no idea until you have one, and then you know things you didn't know you didn't know.  I also know my day is coming.  My running is coming back to me.  My body remembers and even with some extra weight, I am feeling like I used to feel when I ran.  Free and strong and powerful.  So while I may sigh for a moment, I'm over it pretty quickly.

Today I also read this blog on Momastery.  You know, sometimes I really like this writer and sometimes she gets on my nerves, but mostly I like her.  And I LOVED what she wrote today.  She's so wildly honest and that is refreshing to read.  I am honest too, but I like to be honest about the good stuff.  I like to gloss over the bad stuff and push it under the bed where no one can see it.  I guess part of me feels like it isn't that bad to begin with and talking about it would make it seem worse than it is.  It is just life.  And I absolutely love life, so a little dust under the bed doesn't really bother me long term. 

So I'm stealing this from Momastery because I loved it:

And I'm not really sure what else to say except that I've noticed I start a lot of sentences with "and."  I think it is my way of being rebellious towards my middle school English teacher.